About that proposed Carbon Tax ...

You’ve been hearing lately about a proposed Carbon Tax.  With Democrats taking over the House in 2019, you’ll hear a lot more. 

It’s being presented as a new solution to slow down global warming.  It’s also been said it’s an efficient and revenue-neutral way to wean us off fossil fuels. 

Some have even claimed it will put more money in consumers’ pockets.

Here’s a bit of perspective on what it’s really all about …

More than 40 years ago I wrote a high-end newsletter focused on energy policy and legislation for about 10,000 key decision makers at big industrial energy users here and abroad.  For six years I covered energy-related legislation and energy technologies from fossil fuels to geothermal to solar to coal gasification to laser fusion and more.

Back then there was a push for renewable energy forms over oil – not because of concerns about pollution or global warming (since we were actually in a cycle of “global cooling” then), but because America was so dependent on foreign sources for petroleum.

Think OPEC and the oil embargo.  Think gasoline rationing.   

It was considered a “national security” issue.  We needed long-term alternatives to oil or we’d be forever beholden to Middle East dictators like the Saudis. Alarmists claimed America was running out of its own oil reserves and soon there would be no more American oil to extract.    

In short, we were screwed.  We needed to something now, right now, or we’d all be huddled in the dark and the cold in the very near future.  Seriously, that was threat. 

The big push then was on solar.  It was “free.”  It was clean.  As long as the sun came out it was there every day for the taking.  With enough windmills and solar panels, we could produce enough energy to replace oil or coal-fired utility plants.  We could stop building risky nuclear power plants.  And the electricity we produced could power clean-energy electric cars.

Mind you, this was 40 years ago. But doesn’t it sound familiar today? 

Best of all, you could produce all the power you needed for your home without relying on monopolistic public utilities or oil companies.  Just put solar panels on your house or business. 

I saved that tidbit for last because it really was the unspoken goal of the solar theology – you could put the greedy oil companies and public utilities out of business with solar. You could take away their power over you by becoming your own energy producer. Hell, you could make them pay you for extra power you generated instead of always paying them.   

For the true solar zealots, it was all about taking down “the man.” And making a buck.   

Of course, the high priests of solar and other alternatives back then conveniently ignored both fundamental economics and basic physics. They still do today.

People will always do what’s in their own economic best interest. If electricity produced from burning oil or natural gas is cheaper than from windmills or solar-panel farms, it wins in the marketplace. If it’s cheaper to heat your home or business with oil or natural gas than with solar panels, oil or natural gas win.  If it’s cheaper to buy and easier to operate an automobile or a truck powered by gasoline or diesel than an all-electric vehicle, gasoline and diesel win.   

Hence the Carbon Tax.  The only way fossil-fuel opponents can make solar or other alternatives appear economically attractive without subsidies is if they can artificially raise the price of fossil fuels for consumers and businesses dramatically. The Carbon Tax would do that. 

That’s the plan. It’s always been the plan.  It’s not about saving the planet; it’s about making fossil fuels more expensive.  It’s also about a new money grab on false promises. The beneficiaries of the Carbon Tax won’t be consumers – because a tax on fossil fuels is a tax consumers will ultimately pay.

Politicians and bureaucrats will collect the tax and then dole it out, after taking a cut for themselves, to favored constituencies. Think Solyndra and other green-energy money-sucking boondoggles.  Think also of fat-cat leftist billionaires like Tom Steyer and others who hold big stakes in alternative energy companies. And also remember hypocrites like Al Gore who plan to make millions, perhaps billions, trading Carbon Tax offsets.

Meanwhile, as they all get richer consumers will pay more for everything. Count on it.   

I laughed the other night when one lobbyist on TV said consumers would financially benefit from the Carbon Tax.  How?  They’d get money back in rebates from the government to offset higher fuel prices, he said. In fact, consumers would get more money back than the difference in the higher prices they’d pay.  And that cash transfer would help boost the economy.

Yeah, right. Sure … that’s believable.     

We don’t have an oil or natural gas shortage anymore.  Honestly, we never did.  Despite drilling more wells in America than the rest of the world combined, two-thirds of all the oil we found here was still in the ground and there was ample gas trapped in shale. 

We just needed new technologies to get both out at a profit. And these arrived.    

With fracking and other enhanced recovery tools it became economically sound to go after all that oil and natural gas.  Supplies went way up and prices came down. So much for the predicted fossil-fuel-shortage apocalypse.  At the same time, natural gas is now so cheap – and burns so clean – it’s powering utility plants and reducing emissions of sulfur dioxide and other pollutants. Automobile and truck engines are also more fuel efficient and clean. 

Then why do we need a Carbon Tax to reduce use of fossil fuels?   

The answer is deceptively simple:  the economic breakeven for solar and other alternatives has always been like chasing the horizon. It’s always “so close”; but it’s been the same promise for more than 40 years.  That’s because market forces hold down fossil fuel prices and cleaner burning and higher efficiency technologies like hybrid engines keep improving. Even when oil and gas prices do go up the cost of making and shipping solar devices – like wind turbines and photovoltaic panels – goes up as well because both are very energy intensive and not very efficient power producers.   

Without government subsidies – like tax credits to encourage solar and other “renewables,” or tax penalties to discourage fossil fuel use – the needle never moves. And once any subsidies are removed, solar power or electric cars don’t make economic sense for most people. 

Rich people, who don’t need the subsidies anyway, will drive a Tesla or Chevy Volt to show how virtuous they are, forgetting entirely that the electricity they’re using came from a nuclear, coal, natural gas or oil-fired utility. Where do they think that electricity came from?  Their Tesla or Volt? Or maybe some magic socket? 

Politicians like incenting consumers to use alternatives to fossil fuels. It feels good, and shows they are "doing something" about helping the environment, but it doesn’t make much economic sense in the long run.  Or environmental sense.  It’s make-believe. 

If you give people $7500 for buying an all-electric car, what's accomplished?  Yes, they won’t use gasoline as much, but they’ll pay for electricity.  That electricity will likely be produced by burning fossil fuels. And oh, by the way, transmitting electricity to their garage robs 70% of its efficiency.

But won’t goosing demand for all-electric cars via subsidies create economies of scale and lower prices for future electric cars?  Nope. GM just announced it’s discontinuing its Chevy Volt because of disappointing sales, even with the subsidies. Instead it will retool for a hybrid.

That's because, except for the rich and the virtue signalers, as long as oil and natural gas are so cheap nobody really wants an all-electric car that can only go 200 miles before it needs to be charged overnight.  No ordinary consumers want the upfront expense to install solar photovoltaic panels that take 30 years – the average life of their roof anyway – to start to hit economic breakeven, if then.    

All-electric cars and solar will only take off when they make economic sense on their own without subsidies or artificially raising the prices of oil and gas. 

Remember that when Democrats and the left start pushing the Carbon Tax.

The Carbon Tax will only make some rich people richer and the rest of us poorer. It can’t overturn the basic laws of supply and demand nor spur new technology to make alternatives cheaper and more efficient.  It’s just another money grab wrapped in virtuous clothing. 

Now, that's funny ...

Don’t hear that much anymore, do you? 

You can thank the political correctness movement.  The PC police – you know, the killjoys who want to ensure that no one, nowhere is offended by anything. Especially a joke.   

Because jokes can hurt. It’s not right to repeat, much less laugh at, jokes that might hurt. You never know when you risk offending someone. So, no jokes allowed.

Unless, of course, you’re mocking Trump, Melania, Christians, Pence, Republicans, white people, conservatives, or anyone with a religious belief. Then anything goes; it’s fine – and funny. 

There are other rules, however. They also depend on who you are.  

Today if you’re black you can make fun of anyone, even other blacks, except gay blacks – that’s not allowed. Gay people can mock any straight people, but straight people of any race can’t make jokes about anybody who might be LGBTQIAPK (that covers a lot of ground, look it up). 

Gay conservatives – and there are some – are stuck in the same rut as white conservatives and can’t make fun of anybody. That would be offensive.   

Just thought I’d lay out the new rules as I see them.  But you already knew them, right?  We’re all tiptoeing around subjects to stay politically correct. We live in fear of telling a joke in a crowd that goes over like a fart at a funeral. 

That’s too bad.  I’ve always loved a good joke.  Most of us still do. Yet everyone’s too afraid these days to tell a great joke, or even laugh at something that’s clearly funny. 

Humor is about incongruity, the things in life that make no sense, and also about making fun of stereotypical situations – in short, about the things that make us all fallible humans. Especially when it’s about ourselves and our everyday lives; self-deprecating humor is often the funniest. 

Humor is also about stripping away pretensions.  Humbling the haughty.  Poking fun at the powerful. But most of all, knocking the arrogant and self-righteous off their high horse.  

Ridicule, sarcasm, and the well-timed joke are valuable weapons in bringing the mighty down to earth and leveling the playing field.  Humor has always been an equal opportunity offender and a healthier way to vent frustration than physical violence.   

It’s been that way since the dawn of time in every culture, every society, and every nation. Archeologists constantly find written or visual jokes dating back thousands of years. Some are quite crude bathroom humor, and quite graphic.  Others deal with sexual preferences or performance. Some impugn the character of politicians, other ethnic groups, and other religions. Some even make fun of particular gods and myths.   

And I’ll bet in their day these were all considered hilarious.  In bad taste at times, I’m sure, but probably had their audiences laughing their ancient asses off. 

There’s nothing wrong with humor.  Even when it’s at someone else’s expense.  And it’s perfectly okay to laugh at whatever you find funny.  Doubt that? 

Tell me honestly that seeing some arrogant jerk take a pratfall isn’t funny.  Or that the famous pix of Chris Christie in the beach chair isn’t hilarious.  Or Clint Eastwood’s joke in the movie Gran Torino about “a Mexican, a Jew and a colored guy walk into a bar …” wasn’t, either. Tell me you’ve never laughed at Robin Williams doing standup. Or Chris Rock doing standup, or in his video “How to avoid getting your ass kicked by the police.”  Or Mel Brook’s Blazing Saddles.  Or a website I really miss called Regretsy ("Where DIY meets WTF") that mocked silly "handmade" items people were trying to sell on Etsy.  

Or whatever is often obviously in bad taste but still obviously funny to you. 

You’re forgiven for being human and having a sense of humor.  It’s okay. 

It’s the people who have no sense of humor that should worry us. 

They need to get a life instead of trying to ruin ours. 

Lavrentiy Beria and Robert Mueller …

The two have much in common. True, Beria was the longest serving head of Stalin’s secret police and Mueller is the former head of the FBI, yet they share one thing in common.

And based on what we’ve seen so far, it’s a big thing. 

Beria is often quoted as saying: “Show me the man and I’ll find the crime.”  Isn’t that what Mueller is doing in his role as head of the current Special Counsel Investigation?

Here in America we normally require there be a crime before we investigate. Mueller and his team have flipped that and are apparently following Beria’s philosophy.  They are targeting individuals first and trying to find the crimes second.  This isn’t how it’s supposed to work. 

They are targeting Trump as their end game. That much is perfectly clear.  They also don’t care how they get him.  That’s also clear.  They have the entire justice apparatus to help them, along with cheerleading from Democrats and the media. It’s an awesome array of power.   

So far Mueller and his team have uncovered crimes that have nothing directly implicating Trump in an actual crime.  Bad judgement on Trump’s part, perhaps, but not a crime. 

They hope that terrorizing anybody associated with Trump with threats of financial ruin and lengthy jail time will get someone, somewhere frightened enough to incriminate Trump in a major crime.  Almost every day there’s a news story about someone Trump knows – a former lawyer, a Trump campaign associate, a Trump donor, someone Trump had sex with, someone who had business dealings with Trump or his companies before he took office, and others – who has revealed details to Mueller’s team that tie Trump to some possible crime. 

But so far, despite all the breathless reporting, there’s been no “there” there. 

Sure, a bunch of Trump supporters and hangers-on have been subjected to the wrath of Mueller’s team.  Some have copped pleas to past crimes that have nothing to do with Trump or his election. Some have been convicted of lying to Congress or the FBI, or both, on matters not related to Trump, even though whether they actually intentionally lied is questionable. Some, like Cohen, have blamed Trump for illegal acts they may have committed.  And every day the media reports that the noose is tightening around the neck of Donald J. Trump and pushing him toward inevitable impeachment.   

Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, has even said that Trump may be the first President in years to face jail time when he leaves office. 

What Mueller, Democrats, never-Trumpers like Bob Corker and Jeff Flake, and the media won’t admit is they have zero chance of removing Trump from office before his term’s up. Democrats don’t have the votes in Congress to impeach him, even after the midterms.  They’d need two thirds of the Senate to convict him of an impeachable offense, and that’s never going to happen. 

As far as Trump going to jail, forget about that, too.  His cabinet invoking the 25^th Amendment to force him out – something talking heads at CNN and MSNBC, as well as geniuses like Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar, have pushed for – isn’t going to happen, either.   

Trump may not be their idea of a President – in fact, they hate him with a passion that borders on insanity – but they can’t kick him out before his term expires. Just not going to happen.  To believe otherwise is a fever dream. The best they can hope for is to damage him so much he doesn’t get re-elected in 2020.  And even that’s a long shot. 

They’ll continue to vent their frustration.  Mueller will continue to torture anyone he can to try to make his two years of investigations and the millions he’s spent yield something of substance. Even though he knows, as all torturers know, that with enough pain and pressure anyone will eventually say whatever you want them to say, whether it’s true or not.  

Beria knew that.  Mueller and his team know it as well. 

Mueller and his team are using Beria’s tactics, plain and simple.  I don’t know if he’s pissed because he got passed over for FBI Director by Trump. I don’t know if he’s pissed because his buddy James Comey got canned by Trump. 

I honestly can’t figure out his motives, except to get Trump at all costs. 

It’s a sad time for our justice system when a murderous monster like Beria is a de facto role model for how we now conduct investigations. 

It’s also a sad reflection on who we’ve allowed ourselves to become as a nation. 

We should all be appalled. 

Until The Wall gets built ...

Trump wants $5 billion for The Wall.  Congress is only willing to give him $1.5 billion. With Democrats in control of the House in 2019 I’d be surprised if they budget anything for it. 

The question then becomes not when we build The Wall, but will we ever? 

I’m not counting on The Wall ever being built. 

But I have some other suggestions to stem illegal immigration. 

Almost nobody wants to deal with both sides of the illegal immigration question. And there clearly are two sides.  One side is why illegals want to come here.  The other side is why elements in our country keep encouraging illegal immigration. 

The common thread is money.  It’s really that simple. 

Those trying to enter and stay in our country illegally want to make more money; they have little to no interest in becoming citizens, learning English, or assimilating into our society. They aren’t seeking asylum – they simply want better paying jobs and access to free benefits here.    

They aren’t “yearning to be free,” but yearning to enjoy the privileges of a U.S. citizen without the hassle and expense of becoming one through the proper process.

Their lack of interest in becoming a full-fledged participant in the melting pot tradition of the United States also makes them somewhat unique among most immigrant classes in U.S. history. Most prior classes of immigrants wanted the better life the U.S. offered as well, but they also wanted to be part of the American experience by becoming citizens.     

Not this group.  It’s a game to them. See how long you can beat the system; if you can do it long enough without getting caught, you can win. Bring your family along or start one here and after a few years you’re almost guaranteed to find some judge who will give you a pass to stay. 

Even if you get caught and sent back – which is rare – just come back again and start over – the game is rigged in your favor.  Especially if your kids get born here; that’s the golden ticket.   

Those who want more illegals here are also playing a game.

Businesses are the dominant players, from the ag industry to food service, hospitality and construction.  They are all in favor of more illegal immigration.  Illegals don’t demand as much from employers; they’ll work cheaper and are more willing to do less desirable tasks, too. 

Big city politicians and bureaucrats are also big players.  They want more illegal immigrants to boost their resident populations to get more Federal funding and legislative representation based on simple headcounts, rather than citizen counts. 

Again, it’s all about money.

What’s the solution? How do we minimize illegal immigration without The Wall? How can we realistically address and overcome the forces driving illegal immigration?  

First, we have to remove the incentives for illegal immigrants to try to come here.  At the same time, we need to step up punishment for any and all employers who employ illegal immigrants. If we do both we’ll be on the road to solving illegal immigration. 

Everyone knows who is here illegally.  Our Federal government, state and local governments, public school administrators, and business owners all know precisely who is here illegally. The assertion that no one knows for sure is patently ridiculous. As even advocates for illegals acknowledge, if anyone actually wanted to round up illegals everyone knows exactly who and where they are.  

So it would be easy enough to deny Federal benefits to illegal immigrants.

Before anyone claims illegals are already barred from getting government benefits, get real. Their kids are going to our public schools. Their families are getting food stamps. They're taking advantage of a variety of programs.  And some illegals are ballsy enough to fraudulently claim the Earned Income Tax Credit with the IRS – a program designed for low-income citizens – and, get this, the IRS has discovered it already paid out billions to them. 

The sticky part of denying benefits is what to do about children born here to illegals. At birth they are automatically U.S. citizens via the Constitution, regardless of Trump’s assertion otherwise. As U.S. citizens they are entitled to all the benefits afforded other citizens. 

But their parents aren’t.  What would their parents do?  Would they opt to stay with benefits – and public education – only for their U.S.-born children?  Or would they decide to pack it in and head back to the motherland? 

I don’t know. And frankly, I don’t care. The message sent is the important part. 

The reality is we’ll never be able to deport the 11-20 million people already here illegally.  Nor could we ever successfully apply these conditions to all of them.  But if potential illegal immigrants knew they’d never be able to collect government benefits or send their foreign-born kids to our public schools, I think that would be a powerful disincentive to coming here. 

The biggest disincentive of course would be to dry up potential jobs.  We need to crack down on bogus Social Security numbers.  In addition, we need to mandate that every employer– no matter how big or small – with a Federal tax ID must use the E-Verify system to vet all present employees and anyone they plan to hire for permanent or part-time jobs.

If any business then gets caught still employing illegals after a reasonable grace period, fine them $1000 for every single one.  No exceptions. 

If big businesses have repeated violations just revoke any Federal contracts, subsidies, or tax credits they currently get and prohibit them from bidding on any future Federal contracts for a period of five years. That would get their attention. For smaller ag-related businesses such as family farms, and for other seasonal businesses, we need to take away their excuse for hiring illegals by coming up with a manageable guest-worker program for temporary legal employment; the key word there being “temporary.”

If we were serious about stemming illegal immigration these ideas would work. 

Without The Wall. And for a lot less. 

In fact, we don’t actually need to implement any of these all the way. The simple threat they would pose would make people thinking of coming here illegally think twice. 

That may be enough.  

We need to Federalize the election process ...

If the last election proved nothing else, it demonstrated again the need for us to Federalize elections once and for all. 

Enough with this nonsense of allowing state and local bureaucrats to set their own rules on who can vote, when they can vote, and what constitutes a “legal” vote. It’s also time to finally enact a national ID for citizens to stop voter fraud once and for all.

I say that as someone in the great state of Florida, where Mickey Mouse is not just a Disney creation but an apt description of how elections are conducted here, at least in Broward and Palm Beach counties.  When you have politicians here – and also in neighboring Georgia as Stacey Abrams did – openly encouraging non-citizens to vote, it’s a clarion call to clamp down. 

When you have a flood of absentee ballots sent in with return addresses, signatures, birth dates and Social Security numbers that don’t match registration records and lawyers go to court to get these counted anyway, it’s a disgrace.  Worse yet, some nitwit judges actually allow mail-in ballots received well after official cut-off deadlines be counted in a clear violation of state laws.   

And when thousands of “lost” ballots suddenly materialize in Democrat-heavy counties, and when a rental car left at the Tampa airport was found to have boxes of blank ballots in the trunk, is it any wonder citizens think there’s voter fraud? 

Well of course there’s voter fraud. Critics on the left say it can’t be proved.  That’s because the state and local bureaucrats routinely engaged in voter fraud say it never happens.  Apparently that’s good enough for the media and politicians on the left. Nothing to see here, right? 

Do we really trust the media and politicians to tell us the truth?  More importantly, do we really trust state and local bureaucrats to fess up that they have no idea who is voting? The truth is, most don’t know but don’t want to admit it. 

Every time someone gets the bright – and right – idea to clean voter rolls to remove duplicates, the dead, vacant lots, and even registered voters who would be over 125 years old according to Social Security records, Democrats and the left go crazy. It makes no difference how the cleaning is designed, including sending letters to addresses on file that bounce back undeliverable three or more times, Democrats and the left scream bloody murder. 

It’s always a plot to disenfranchise minority voters, according to them. So is any attempt to require people to prove who they are – or even that they are alive – to vote.    

Think about why the left and Democrats are so opposed to voter ID.  Why they are so opposed to verifying addresses and signatures of voters.  Why they fight every attempt to ensure that only citizens are voting in our elections.

There’s only one conclusion: Democrats and the left are stuffing the ballot boxes. 

Didn’t you ever wonder why when blue district bureaucrats “find” additional ballots those ballots are almost always overwhelmingly for Democrats?  Or that some heavily Democrat places have more people voting than the number registered to vote? Or that “provisional” ballots almost always favor Democrats over Republicans? 

Are those just coincidences?  Really? 

The media like to say that we are an almost evenly divided nation, politically.

I honestly don’t believe that. I think widespread voter fraud only makes it look like that.

So here’s what I think needs to be done to “true” our elections. 

We need a national ID. Every citizen 18 and over needs to have a unique citizen number and photo ID, on a card chipped with their encoded date of birth, Social Security number, and thumbprint.  A driver’s license or student ID doesn’t cut it. Getting the card would be free and the process would be managed and executed by the Department of Homeland Security. Obtaining one of these fraudulently would be a serious Federal felony.

I don’t want to hear any of the BS about the burden this would place on the old, the disabled, or minorities. If need be, we could send out DHS-staffed mobile units to minority neighborhoods, nursing homes or wherever needed to document everyone.  Whatever it costs would be worth it. 

During the process, cross-check these against existing Social Security records. No valid Social Security number, no ID, period.   

All the data would be entered into a Federal database.  To vote in person anywhere in the U.S. you would need to show that ID and have the chip read.  To vote by absentee ballot that ballot would have to include that citizen number, which could then be cross-checked against the database to insure the filer only votes once, rather than once where they live and another where they might maintain another residence, as I suspect some seasonal residents and college students might be doing. 

Anyone possessing one of these valid chipped IDs would automatically be registered to vote in any and all of their state’s elections, and all Federal elections. The burden of maintaining and validating voter rolls would be taken out of the hands of the states.   

Finally, once someone has been cleared to vote in person, use only paper ballots of a consistent design set by the Federal Election Commission, which should also set uniform early voting times and rules, deadlines for submitting absentee ballots, and deadlines for submitting results, across the entire country.  In short, cut out the state and local bureaucrats entirely. 

Then let’s see if we are really so evenly divided.  I suspect we’re not.

All this would take a act of Congress. I fully expect a wide range of legal challenges, mainly from Democrats and the left, less so from Republicans and the right. 

Big city politicians will scream that the same data could be used to hunt down illegals and deny them Federal benefits. And they would be right about that.

I consider that a bonus.   

Too stupid to vote ...

Once again, Florida is the epicenter of controversy over counting votes. 

And once again, Broward and Palm Beach counties are demonstrating how stupid they are.  How incompetent the hacks supervising the elections there are.  Plus, how stupid the voters in those counties apparently still are. 

It was bad enough when Bush/Gore proved voters there couldn’t understand the concept of a punch card to vote. The instructions then were crystal clear – you must punch out the hole next to the candidate you’re voting for, and only one for each office. 

But did those voters get it? Of course not.  They’re morons.  They’re also overwhelmingly Democrats. That’s not to say all Democrats are morons, but I see a correlation there, at least here in the Sunshine State.    

Then Democrats flew in a horde of lawyers to argue what constituted a punched-out hole.  Was a dimpled mark good enough to indicate what the voter wanted? A hanging chad? What about voters who tentatively punched one hole and then punched another too?

To avoid this nonsense again the state decided to only use paper ballots going forward. Again the instructions – which down here have to be in multiple languages – were crystal clear:  You needed to fill in the circle next to your choice of candidate. And only one per candidate.  That’s it.

Of course that’s too complicated, apparently, for the morons in Broward and Palm Beach counties. Instead of doing what everyone has done on multiple-choice exams and forms for decades, some voters there drew arrows, drew an X, crossed out their first choice, etc.  All of which stymied the machines designed to read the paper ballots electronically. 

About 3.7 percent more voters in Broward voted for governor than for anyone in the U.S. Senate race on the same ballot.  That’s a pretty dramatic undervote, well outside the norm, which also is suspicious. Now some on the left are blaming the design of the ballot itself for that. Guess who designed the ballot? Bingo, the same Democrat hacks running elections there.     

When it came to absentee ballots – always an area ripe for fraud – a lot of voters in those counties couldn’t follow instructions on those, either. Even though those were in multiple languages. According to the hacks running elections there, some “forgot” to sign their ballots or their signatures didn’t remotely match what was on file. Some put a different return address on their ballot than the one they used to register to vote.  Some entered the date they completed the ballot where they were supposed to put their birthdate.  A lot seemed to have ignored that their ballot had to be postmarked by a certain date to be accepted and counted. 

These people are clearly too stupid to vote.  Or perhaps those stuffing the ballot box are. 

I believe every legal vote should be counted.  I also believe no vote cast improperly or by non-citizens should be counted. That includes mail-in ballots postmarked long after the deadlines for sending them in.  And if the address you use, or your signature doesn’t match what’s on file, those votes shouldn’t be counted at worst and investigated for identity theft and fraud at best.    

The bozos running elections in those two counties know the rules. They should, since they’ve been chastised by the courts many times in the past for election shenanigans. 

Yet even now they are defying recent court orders to at least disclose how many people voted in their counties.  Today is November 12th; by Florida law they were required to give a total count 30 minutes after polls closed on November 6th.  And here we are. They still refuse to tell us.  Over 70,000 “new” votes have mysteriously appeared in Broward County since the polls closed.  Thousands more have suddenly appeared in Palm Beach County since then, too.

Huh? 

Now, if you’re not all that familiar with Florida, you might think maybe the irregularities and problems in Broward and Palm Beach counties are because these are poor, backwards places.  They’re not.  They are two of the most affluent and well-educated counties in the state.  Broward has the second largest population of any county in the state. There’s no excuse for this.

But they are overwhelmingly Democrat.  And like too many Democrats everywhere, they feel they shouldn’t be held to the same rules as everyone else. Laws, what laws? Rules, what rules?  In fact they are suing to count all the mail-in ballots postmarked and received after the official deadlines.  They also want to count mail-in ballots that somehow got “damaged” and local polling staff – also Democrats – thoughtfully just filled in new ballots as replacements. Plus they want to count the ballots “interpreted” by local polling staff to decide a voter’s intention. 

I’m not making this up. That’s how bad it is.

For the life of me I can’t decide who is more stupid – the voters there, the hacks in charge in Broward and Palm Beach counties, or state officials who seem powerless to stop this craziness.  

Right now we're going through mandatory recounts for the Senate seat, the race for governor, and the race for the State Agriculture Commissioner.    

I suspect at some point Federal courts will intervene, perhaps even the SCOTUS. Then Democrats will whine and complain that the SCOTUS “stole” the election.   

It’s just par for the course in the two most heavily Democrat counties in the state.  

Why I can't vote for Democrats ...

I’m not crazy about the Republicans, but Democrats are too crazy for me. 

Between chasing Republicans from restaurants and frantic outbursts from supposed leaders in the Democrat party to “get in the face” of Republicans and administration officials wherever they are, and calls to overthrow the government, it’s all too much. 

Seriously, that party’s been taken over by lunatics.  And often violent lunatics at that. Plus, they aren’t honorable – by that I mean you can’t trust them to keep their word.  Or tell the truth. 

Perhaps the final straw is that I can’t abide their willful ignorance. You can fix a lot of things in this world but you can’t fix stupid. If they don’t understand how the balance of power in our government is supposed to work, what’s in the Constitution, or the role of the Supreme Court, then they should do us all a favor and STFU until they do.

All that information is readily available, but they don’t want to know any of this because it gets in the way of what they “feel.”  They truly believe their emotions trump everyone else’s rights.   

You can’t reason with them, any more than you can with a petulant four-year-old, which is how they act too often these days.  They pout, they shout, they throw tantrums when they don’t get their way. Even when they get their way they take that as a sign of weakness and press for more concessions.  It’s a never-ending siege in which they will never be satisfied. 

Honestly, it’s exhausting to deal with them. There’s no such thing as social intercourse with them; they are too Hell-bent on ideologically raping you. That’s why so many of us sadly now avoid former friends who’ve become strident Democrats; as much as we try to keep our political opinions to ourselves in social gatherings, they can’t resist attacking us because we might not agree with them.   

It’s more than bad behavior.  It borders on insanity.

I was at a social event not long ago when someone – apropos of nothing – started blaming Trump for why they made a crappy salary as a teacher 10 or so years ago.  Think about that.  10 or so years ago. Everybody was afraid to bring up that Trump had nothing to do with it, for fear that person would go even further off the rails, as they had done many times before. Others tried valiantly to change the subject, but the person wouldn’t let it go. This is all too commonplace. 

The Kavanaugh hearings fully exposed the reality of today’s Democrats and their supporters. It wasn’t a good picture.

Democrat Senators on the Judiciary Committee displayed their complete and utter ignorance about the Constitution and the rule of law.  Then they pulled a trick play – the unfounded and uncorroborated Ford allegations they’d known about for months but never disclosed until then – after the hearings were officially over. Talk about ignoring the rules. 

They demanded a delay to hear Ford tell her story. That was granted.  When Kavanaugh rebutted Ford’s story, they went back to his high school yearbook to try to find something incriminating.  Then they demanded an FBI investigation that, in their words, should only take a few days.

They had Democrat activists and other alleged “survivors” of sexual assault flood the halls of Congress to get in the face of Senators on the Judiciary Committee right before the critical vote. At the last moment, a Republican Senator caved under the pressure and the tearful urging of Democrat Senator Coons.  The request for yet another FBI investigation was granted. 

When after those few days the FBI couldn’t corroborate any of Ford’s story, or of two other alleged assault “victims” that had suddenly appeared, they accused the White House of a coverup. 

Kavanaugh got confirmed, despite their best efforts to slime him, and is now an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court.  But as the swearing in was underway, Democrat protesters pounded on the doors of the Supreme Court, screaming. That’s a tantrum.    

So the new approach from the Democrats is that if they take back the House majority, they will conduct additional investigations of Kavanaugh – a sitting Supreme Court Justice – with the goal of impeaching him and removing him from the Court.

Of course, they also plan to impeach Trump.

They are nuts.  They also don’t know what’s involved in removing someone from the Supreme Court or the White House.  There’s no point in educating them; they aren’t interested. 

To show how out of touch they really are, after all their violence and threats of violence, they claim the only way to bring back civility is for Democrats to take back the House.

If that isn’t crazy, I don’t know what is. 

I can’t vote for any of them.  

The more we learned about Dr. Ford ...

The more it points to the inevitable conclusion that she’s either crazy at worst, or delusional at best.  I don’t believe she’s lying – that would require her to know what she’s saying is untrue. I’m not saying that; I think she really believes her story.

However, just because she believes it doesn’t make it true.

“True” to her, perhaps. But not objectively true.   

Nobody can corroborate her original story.  It’s becoming clear that she’s now backfilling parts of that story. Once again, none of her more recent revelations have been corroborated.  What’s actually happened is the gulf between her testimony and verified reality has widened. 

In Ford’s defense, many believed it’s possible something traumatic may have actually happened to her when she was 15, but perhaps not by Kavanaugh. I was one of those. I didn’t want to believe she made up everything, because that would mean she was a calculating liar or crazy.  

Then I saw her testify. 

A calculating liar would have been more focused. She was all over the place and couldn’t stick to what she said were her “details,” or even explain the inconsistencies in her prior statements. Her supporters will defend her by saying she was terrified, but she didn’t seem terrified to me. If anything, she was smiling and friendly.

And, to be kind, ditzy. At times, incoherent. To me, she wasn’t in the least bit credible given what she alleged and the complete lack of evidence. Sympathetic maybe; believable, not at all.    

After seeing her performance, I wondered why nobody ever asked for a competency hearing on Ford, which seemed warranted.  Or at the least probed how she suddenly remembered – in 2012 – what she now claims happened. It all came out, according to her, in a couple’s therapy session then.  How?  Was it a spontaneous epiphany?  Was she “guided” by the therapist to “recover” the cause of all her problems?

Nobody had the guts to ask.

Everybody was afraid to appear to be attacking her.  She had the armor of a “victim of sexual assault.” She was to be believed, no matter what.  All women were to be believed.   

Even now, nobody has the guts to confront her with sworn testimony from others. 

And nobody is willing to raise the most obvious question: is she at best delusional? 

I think she is. Not her fault; she can’t help it.  But nothing she’s said makes sense.

It’s as if she had a dream – or an artificially induced “recovered memory” – in 2012 and decided: “Aha – that’s why I’m a basket case. That’s the cause of all my problems. It’s not my fault at all.”  Everything fell into place for her after that.  She’s fully invested in that answer. 

It’s disgraceful that the left and Democrats exposed her to public scrutiny for purely political purposes.  They had to know she was going to have her alternate reality challenged.  Perhaps they hoped she would present such a pathetic image no one would notice how flimsy her evidence was. 

She was no more than a sacrificial lamb, to appease their more extreme elements.

And an unwilling sacrificial lamb, at that.

They should be ashamed. But of course they won't be. They'll keep using her as a rallying point for the mid-terms and beyond.  

They've even promised that if they take the House they'll investigate her claims further and try to impeach now-Justice Kavanaugh.

The torture of Ford will continue. I'm truly sorry for her.    

Everyone's afraid to say this about Dr. Ford ...

Even though it’s painfully obvious. 

The woman’s got serious mental problems. She’s had them her entire life. Still does. 

Now, something may have happened in her youth to aggravate these.  Or maybe not.  But it’s pretty clear she’s still desperately searching for a reason – something or someone she can blame – for why she’s been an emotional basket case all these years. And still is.   

Before anyone thinks I’m victim shaming, I’m not.  Sexual assault is a serious matter. It takes a lot of courage for a victim of sexual assault to come forward. Some victims believe they are somehow responsible for their assault. I understand why victims are hesitant to go public. 

At the same time it’s unrealistic to believe nobody – nobody – ever lies about being assaulted, or misrepresents an event that may or may not have happened. Sometimes it’s for revenge.  Sometimes – as in the Duke Lacrosse team fiasco – it’s a desire for a payoff.  Sometimes – as in the bogus “rape culture” at UVA reported by Rolling Stone – it’s to push a false narrative. 

Sometimes it’s also just after-the-fact remorse – you realize you made a really bad decision one night to have consensual sex with someone you wish, in hindsight, you hadn’t.   

And, to be perfectly honest, sometimes it’s to create an ever-ready excuse for why you have emotional or relationship problems for years. Whether or not anything ever actually happened, or to what degree, people will almost always take your word and have sympathy.  Sadly, that’s why some have falsely claimed to have been sexually assaulted.       

It’s easy to accuse someone of sexual assault, especially in this day and age. Accusers, male and female, have come out of the woodwork because of the #metoo movement.  In a perverse reversal of traditional standards, the accused are now automatically deemed guilty and have the burden to prove they are innocent. That’s not how justice works or has for centuries here. 

Rape and attempted rape are serious crimes.  They are felonies for good reason. Accusations of rape and attempted rape need to be investigated by law enforcement. Sexual harassment is also covered by law.  Unwanted groping and grinding are more difficult to prove but still against the law.  No one should take lightly allegations of any of these.    

While it's easy to accuse someone of sexual assault, it takes guts and determination to prove it.  It also takes evidence, however. The name and description of the assailant.  The circumstances.  Details about the time and place.  At least some corroboration about when and where it happened.  Who you told afterward, and when. And if possible a police report. 

Admittedly, that’s a lot to ask of someone who has just been sexually assaulted. It’s almost impossible to prove alleged sexual assault 30 or more years later, short of a confession by the accused or a credible eyewitness to the assault. 

Just as it was impossible to prove by Ford. She couldn’t confirm the time, the place, who else was there, or provide corroboration by the people she named as witnesses to her claim.

Did she make it all up? I don’t know.  We’ll never know.  I’m certain she believes it happened.  To her it was all very real and very traumatic.  Although she never told anyone about it for 30 years.  It only came up in a couple’s therapy session in 2012. 

And she was in couple’s therapy, by her own account, because she and her husband were arguing about adding a second front door to their house.

Yes, they were in couple’s therapy over a door.  

She said she wanted the second front door because she was claustrophobic, which is also why she says doesn’t like to fly.  It all stems – she says – from the time she claims she was held down and groped by a drunken Brett Kavanaugh when she was 15.

Something that only came out in couple’s therapy in 2012. 

Now she also blames that same event for why she had difficulty in her first two years at UNC, which would have been three to five years after the alleged sexual assault. Why she’s had trouble with relationships ever since.  And, I suppose, why she needed therapy over the years, culminating with the need for outside counseling to deal with a disagreement over a door. 

Watching her testify the other day saddened me.  I felt sorry for her because she obviously believes the alleged assault by Kavanaugh is the cause for all her mental and emotional problems. She has so much invested in that belief that’s the reason for everything in her troubled life. 

Even when obvious contradictions in her testimony and ever-changing accounts were revealed, she never wavered. That’s how strongly she needs to defend her premise.  It’s everything to her belief system. Her whole world crumbles if she concedes she might be wrong. 

The inconsistencies in what she and her attorneys have said are not minor. They are glaring holes that call into question just about everything else.   

For someone supposedly terrified to fly, and why she needed much more time to drive cross-country to a hearing, she admitted she flies a lot to domestic and overseas destinations, including at least twice in the days leading up to her appearance. When she was reminded that Grassley had offered to fly the committee and staffers out to her to accommodate her alleged fear of flying – an offer widely reported by every news outlet and certainly communicated to her attorneys – she insisted she never heard of the offer.  When her best friend from high school flatly refuted Ford’s assertion that she was at the same party that night, or even that she and Ford had ever been at a party with Kavanaugh, Ford dismissed that as understandable because her friend was dealing with health issues. 

The longer this stays open, the more she “remembers” about the event. She now “remembers” the layout of the house, but not roughly where it is, how as a 15-year-old she got there or how she got home, or even which and how many boys and girls were there. 

She now “remembers” she saw Mark Judge – someone she claims participated in the assault, and who has repeatedly said he has no memory of the party, much less the assault – at his job about five to six weeks later and he was visibly shaken to see her.  She wants his employment records so she can narrow down when the alleged assault happened; in effect she wants to use where he worked and when to try to get an approximate date for the alleged assault, since she’s not even sure what year it was, or the time of year, either.         

Sorry, but no.  This has gone on long enough.  Every “new” revelation by Ford seems manufactured. Some directly contradict what she said earlier. In short, it appears she’s now evolving and embellishing memories on the fly.

Nobody wants to say this, but I will: none of this makes any sense at all except to her and her supporters.  I don’t find her allegations about Kavanaugh credible at all.  I don’t doubt for a minute she believes what she’s saying, however.  But belief and proof are different. 

It’s not just a case of “he-said, she-said.” It’s more a case of absolutely no evidence except a “recovered” memory 30-some years later, versus sworn testimony from everyone the alleged victim claims could corroborate her story, including her best friend at the time, that they don’t remember anything about it, or even being at some party like this with her.

I have real sympathy for victims of sexual assault.  Honestly I do.  But sympathy alone doesn’t cut it, especially given the gravity of the claims she’s made against Kavanaugh.

Unless she or the FBI can present some incontrovertible proof – besides her memory, which has shown to be spotty at best – I’m more inclined to believe Kavanaugh.  

Timid little mice ...

It’s no wonder Democrats always get their way.

Republicans are afraid of them. 

All it takes is for Democrats to say Republicans are racist, sexist, hate gays, hate immigrants or whatever and Republicans fold.  Doesn’t make any difference what the issue is, Republicans will always cave. Democrats can count on that.  

Republicans are so, so afraid people won’t like them. They’re afraid they won’t be able to get Democrats to help them pass a budget or anything else, even when Republicans have the majority.  Most of all they’re afraid women, Hispanics and blacks won’t vote for them.

Honestly, it’s pathetic.

If Trump’s election proved anything, there’s no reason to be afraid. More women, Hispanics, and blacks voted for him than anyone expected, despite the nonstop drumbeat from Democrats and the media that he was prejudiced against all those groups.  Even now, after more than two years of unrelenting attacks on Trump, his approval ratings have increased.  Do people like Trump?  Not really, but do they like what he’s accomplished?  Yes.

In short, being liked is highly overrated; doing your job is more important. 

The latest cave is over Dr. Ford’s unsubstantiated accusations that Brett Kavanaugh groped her at a party some 36 years ago. Ford can’t remember where it was, when it was, how she got there, or how she got home.  She only remembers how traumatic it was.  But she didn’t tell anybody at the time, even her closest friends, nor anyone else over all the intervening years, and only “remembered” it in couples’ therapy in 2012. And of course six years later when Kavanaugh was about to be confirmed for a seat on the Supreme Court, and after extensive questioning by Democrats who knew about the accusation but said nothing, asked nothing of Kavanaugh about it, until the hearing officially ended. 

No prosecutor would ever bring something like this to court, given how vague the accuser is on the details.  Ford and her growing army of Democrat strategists advising her know this. That’s not to say she doesn’t believe something happened to her 36 or so years ago – she’s not sure about what year or time of year either – but there’s absolutely nothing to substantiate her claims.

Everybody she claimed was there or participated in the event has denied being there, or even that there was such a party.  They’ve done that under oath, something Ford hasn’t done.

Scared as ever, Republicans have tried to make a deal to have Ford testify. Her side has bargained from a position of strength, which baffles me since she doesn’t have a case.  Ford’s side has blown off every attempt at getting this done quickly and impartially. Ford’s side is controlling everything – the date she’ll maybe testify, and that’s a weak maybe – and have demanded a host of ridiculous conditions for the privilege of giving her a platform to trot out her alleged assault. Which, BTW, has gone from being portrayed initially as attempted rape to now simply groping, in her side’s own words.

The gutlessness of the Republicans has allowed this to happen.  So afraid. So worried about how they’ll be perceived. So unwilling to do their job. If they had closed the hearings as scheduled and had the vote, despite the last-minute parlor trick of the Democrats, we might have been spared all this insanity. Instead, they quaked in fear at being seen as insensitive to women who’ve been sexually assaulted. 

They should have, for once, called the Democrats’ bluff. They would have won. At worst they would have forced the Democrats to put up or shut up immediately. But they didn’t.     

Whether Ford testifies or not – and I honestly believe she’ll play Lucy to Charlie Brown at the last minute and not show up – the damage has been done. Just as Democrats wanted and the media wanted all along.  They knew Republicans wouldn’t have the guts to stand up to them. 

Worst of all, Democrats have been saying all along that if by some miracle Kavanaugh gets confirmed, they plan to impeach him if they take the House. So if he doesn’t get confirmed, Democrats win.  And if he does get confirmed, Democrats win.

Nice work Republicans. You spineless weasels

Re-elect no Republicans. Let the Democrats take the House in 2018. Hell, let them take the Senate, too.  Let them start the impeachment proceedings against Trump, and if he’s lucky, Kavanaugh.  Democrats will never get enough votes in the Senate – it takes 67 out of 100 – to make impeachment stick, so those are bullshit threats and should be dealt with as such.   

Then when all those lost Republican House and Senate seats come up again, elect people with the fortitude to withstand the Democrats’ bullying tactics. 

Sooner or later, you have to stand up to a bully, or it never ends.

Tough love for Puerto Rico ...

A majority of Puerto Ricans have voted for statehood. 

I say NFW.  Instead, I think it’s time to give Puerto Rico its independence. 

There.  Goodbye. Good luck.  Don’t let the door hit you on the butt. 

We don’t need Puerto Rico. 

It has no strategic value to us. It consumes far more of our resources than it ever gives back.

It’s not even that nice of a place to visit. Wasn’t even before the hurricanes. We vacationed near San Juan for a week some years ago. The resort was beautiful but the staff warned us not to rent a car and go off exploring on our own – it was too dangerous.

That was good advice.  The crime rate there is routinely about 50% higher than in the U.S. as a whole.  I’m not making that up; that’s according to FBI stats.    

It has a high poverty rate – upwards of 46% of its people lived below the poverty line in 2015; that’s long before the latest hurricanes. It’s shown zero fiscal responsibility; it piled on debt to where it needs a $70 billion bailout.  It allowed its infrastructure to collapse well before the hurricanes by continuously shifting dollars away to fund more government benefits. 

Puerto Ricans right now are American citizens. They can vote in Federal elections, but they don’t have any elected U.S. Representatives or Senators in Congress like our states.

That leads Puerto Rico to constantly bitch that it suffers under taxation without representation.  As American citizens they do pay the same Federal taxes we do, right?  Sort of.  They don’t pay any Federal income tax on income derived inside Puerto Rico, unlike every state in the U.S.  But they do pay into Social Security and Medicare; that is if they have taxable income, which a large percentage don't because they are unemployed or have been deemed disabled. 

Meanwhile, inflation there is in the double digits.

Puerto Ricans are subject to a national sales tax on 11%, yet its government still can’t afford to keep the lights on. My bet is nobody there, except for tourists, is likely paying that tax.  Even the big corporations there – like big pharma, mostly lured by generous tax treatment from the U.S. to help its economy – don’t contribute much. Despite all the special breaks and incentives given to Puerto Rico by Congress over the decades, it’s still a basket case.    

It’s our own little banana republic.  Fraud and corruption are rampant.

About a third of the population is on food stamps, with few if any restrictions on who qualifies. Not all that long ago the Feds uncovered a $30 million racket there where people were trading their stamps for cash.  Other vendors have been found to be falsifying receipts and sales records to cover for allowing recipients to use food stamps to buy things like liquor and cigarettes.   

Before the hurricanes nine of the top 10 zip codes receiving Social Security Disability Income (SSDI) were in Puerto Rico.  Initial SSDI claims there were approved 63% of the time, compared to about 30% here in the states.  Is that because so many more Puerto Ricans were truly disabled?  Come on. 

Given numbers like that, is it any wonder why Trump and others distrust the casualty counts from Puerto Rico?  Think about it: how do deaths from the hurricanes on the island rise from 64 to almost 3,000 after a few months? Do we trust ordinary Puerto Ricans not to overstate what happened? Do we think they wouldn’t cook the books on this as well to get more? 

This is the same place where the mayor of San Juan went on TV and chastised Trump and FEMA for not sending any supplies in the hurricanes’ aftermath.  Puerto Ricans were starving, without power, and without clean water.  And FEMA and Trump were doing nothing to help. 

She did this in a brightly lit warehouse standing in front of row after row of pallets of bottled water and other supplies sent by – guess who – Trump and FEMA.  Huh?     

We should blame our own politicians for some of the institutional problems in Puerto Rico. Democrats in particular have routinely fought against demanding more fiscal responsibility by the people running Puerto Rico. They see nothing wrong there.  

As a result, we’ve allowed Puerto Rico to devolve into a virtual socialist state largely dependent on government largesse – from us – to support an entrenched bureaucracy of political cronies.     

But Puerto Rico takes it to a new level that would make even Rahm Emanuel blush.    

About 7% of adult Americans work for Federal, state or local governments.  In Puerto Rico it’s 21%. Some years back, Puerto Rico’s government changed pension rules for its employees to give them 75% of their three highest salaries when they retired; not surprisingly, government workers near retirement got rapid promotions with wage increases. That cost billions, to the point that its public pension fund is so underfunded that U.S. taxpayers will probably have to fork over a billion dollars a year for decades just to meet its current pension commitments.

How did it get in such a mess? A big reason was buying votes with perks and weird benefits, like mandatory Christmas bonuses and free electricity to all 78 of its municipalities, and the pension giveaways. It had to float bonds it could never pay back to finance all that. 

Puerto Rico being part of the U.S. has always been far more beneficial for its citizens than it could ever be for us – they can come here and live as U.S. citizens, they get benefits we pay for, we bail them out of every catastrophe and self-inflicted wound. 

What do we get in return? Nothing but bitching and moaning. And demands for more. 

A perfect case is its reaction to the recent hurricanes. Certainly, the island was devastated.  But a major reason was because it was a crap hole before the hurricanes hit. When you live in a shack it’s going to get blown away in a hurricane. When you let corrupt building inspectors nod and wink at substandard construction, those buildings are going to get wiped out, too.

Now it wants us to rebuild the island. No, actually it wants us to spend billions on restoring a Puerto Rico that didn’t exist before the hurricanes. It wants us to fix things it never did.  It wants us to provide new things it couldn’t be bothered with for decades.  Its demands for more money are not entirely because of the hurricanes, but largely because it was already broke from prior corruption and gross mismanagement not related to any storm.    

When a power grid hasn’t been updated since the 1950s and is run by political hacks enriching themselves rather than making necessary improvements, the result is predictable. Even before the latest hurricanes power on the island was spotty at best with frequent outages and brownouts; but a big storm comes along and suddenly it’s time for the U.S. to finance construction of a brand-new power grid.   

Honestly, when power was restored to 90% of the island, that was probably more than existed before the hurricanes.  Geraldo Rivera – always proud of his Puerto Rican heritage – recently said that in years past (well before the latest hurricanes) when he would visit his relatives there, it wasn’t unusual for 70% of the island to be without power.      

Now some will think I’m kicking Puerto Rico while it’s down. I feel sorry for its people. But only to a point.  They are the same people, like big-city and deep-blue-state Democrats here, who kept electing politicians who bought their votes with promises they could never keep and giveaways they couldn’t pay for. 

They voted to get stuff they wanted now, damn the future consequences. 

Guess what. It didn’t work out. It almost never does. Just as it doesn't here.    

I’m not saying we should abandon Puerto Rico immediately.  Its people – not its government – need our assistance.  We should help the people with humanitarian aid.  But once we have it somewhat stabilized, we should cut our losses and get out.  And somewhat stabilized doesn’t mean perfect, or making Puerto Rico much better than it was before.   

In its present state, it’s a bottomless money pit, much like Afghanistan and Iraq. Like those, any billions given to its government by us to “rebuild” Puerto Rico will only line the pockets of local politicians and their pals. If they get their hands on our money, it will disappear as fast as those 3,000 people who supposedly died in the hurricanes.  We should skip its government altogether.

Then, if Puerto Ricans already living stateside and in our military want to stay U.S. citizens, they can.  But give the island full independence to succeed or fail on its own. Maybe then the people of Puerto Rico will finally step up to take full responsibility for their own futures. 

Finally, by all means, never allow Puerto Rico to become a state. 

Never.  Despite pleas from Democrats.  Or Puerto Ricans.  

Democrats only want statehood for the island because it typically votes for Democrats. Democrats want it to get Senators and U.S. Representatives in Congress who will also reliably toe the Democrat line, and more Democrat electors in the Electoral College. 

Puerto Ricans want statehood to get more from us, plain and simple.

Enough is enough. 

Trump's worst week ...

I’ve lost count of how many there have been.   

It seems every other week is Trump’s worst week.  At least according to CNN and MSNBC. Calling this every other week seems a bit much, to me.  You’d think that since worst is an absolute – worst implies “ever” – every “worst week” would have to be even worse than before. 

He’s been in office about 20 months. Let’s say he’s had four weeks than weren’t the worst ever.  That still leaves 38 weeks of ever-escalating bad things.  Each one would have to be worse for him than the week before. Is that even possible? 

If you start small, maybe him getting caught falsely claiming his inauguration crowds were bigger than Obama’s, that would still be 37 more increments of worst weeks. Each one worse for him than the previous one. That’s a tough mountain to climb if it keeps getting steeper. 

Not to say the media haven’t tried valiantly to keep that pace.

The Steele dossier.  The demands for his tax returns.  Payoffs to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal. Avenetti’s lawsuit against Trump.  The lawsuits over Trump University. Denying McCain was a hero.  Firing James Comey.  His revolving door of officials.  Bad blood between Trump and establishment Republicans.  Charlottesville.  The Mueller probe. Paul Manafort’s indictment and convictions. Omarosa and her tapes. Michael Cohen’s indictment and convictions, plus rumored tapes. Fights with Jeff Sessions.  All the books from Comey and others.  Cozying up to Putin. The op-ed by some anonymous administration official.  And, of course, the constant drumbeat for impeachment. 

At different times these were the basis for Trump’s worst week. 

But Trump is still here. For a guy with ever-increasingly worst weeks, that’s amazing. 

Or maybe not. 

I think the media haven’t been successful because they consistently overplay their hand. Sure, the hardcore Trump haters, and never-Trumpers among Republicans, loved these stories. However, hardcore Trump supporters and populist Republicans don’t care much about any of this – like Trump’s fiercest opponents, they’ve made up their minds about him already. 

There’s also the inherent problem of constantly claiming this is his worst week. You can only take that so far before it loses impact.  Especially when all the dire predictions of his downfall fall short.  All the media’s smoking guns have essentially shot blanks.  All the “this is it” moments haven’t materialized.   All the “writing’s on the wall” assertions have looked foolish in hindsight. 

Trump’s been his own worst enemy.  He’s been a jerk.  He’s been arrogant and rude.  He’s said dumb things.  All that’s true.  If any other President acted the same, he or she’d be gone. 

But he’s not any other President, although the media and the Trump haters insist on comparing him to them.  Because he’s not like any other President is part of his appeal; it’s probably the biggest reason he was elected – it was a middle finger to the media and political establishment.

This is even more apparent now that Obama is back on the campaign trail for Democrats. 

Obama feigns moral outrage at how Trump has treated our allies, minorities, immigrants, the poor, the LGBT community, and the environment. How Trump enacted tax cuts that only helped the wealthy and corporations.  How Trump has harmed our democracy. And how Trump has caused us to lose respect in the world community.  

Obama also claims he's the one really responsible for the booming economy under Trump. 

This from the same guy who doubled our national debt – seriously, doubled – in only eight years. Put millions more people on food stamps. Increased the poverty rate. Accomplished absolutely nothing to reduce joblessness among blacks and Hispanics.  Stood by as middle class jobs disappeared. Said most of our lost manufacturing jobs would never come back. Fought against developing more domestic fossil fuels. Squandered billions on “shovel-ready jobs” that never materialized.  Wasted billions more on boondoggles like Solyndra. Allowed Libya to collapse into chaos by “leading from behind.” Blamed an obscure Internet video for the deaths of Americans in Libya. Failed to follow through on his “red line” in Syria, to the astonishment of our strategic partners. Did nothing when Russia annexed Crimea.

Oh, and also used the IRS to go after his opponents, and tapped the phones of AP reporters.  

These are just a few stark reasons why Trump was elected after Obama.

I fully expect in the weeks to come to see more claims Trump is once again experiencing his “worst week” based on some leaked memo, some lawsuit, the Mueller probe, or whatever.

Of course it won’t be. 

What I don’t expect to see from the media is the weird phenomena Obama will cause. Having Obama out there again, making the same claims, touting the same policies, is a gift to Trump.  It reminds everyone why they wanted Trump instead of more of the same. 

Every week Obama’s out there makes that week Trump’s best week.

Trump should thank him.  It’s a nice change.