January 6, 2023

Per Wikipedia, “owning the libs” is a political strategy used by some conservatives in the United States that focuses on upsetting political liberals. Users of the strategy emphasize and expand upon culture war issues intended to be divisive to provoke a reaction in others. As I watch the car wreck that is the Republican Party trying to elect a Speaker of the House, I am not feeling particularly owned. There are a lot slur names and phrases for the Republican Party that come to mind that capture the moment. The Clown Car. The Insurrectionists. The Raucous Caucus. The McCarthy Hearings. Gaetz Gate. The Greene New Deal. Gang-nam Style. The Caucasian Caucus. Red ties, white necks and Blue Ribbon beer. The Laddie and the Trump. The Gray Old Party. We’ve fallen down, and we can’t get up.

If you are trying to own me, you are going to have to do better. The reality is you can’t be owned by anyone for whom you have no respect. You can’t be owned by crazy. You can only be owned by something that has a scintilla truth. When the truth is negotiable, the only reaction you’ll get from the Libs is pity.

January 3, 2023

Once again, NFL players took a knee to show their concern about an issue that impacts them. Last night, Buffalo Bills cornerback, Damar Hamlin, took a direct shot to the chest, and went into cardiac arrest. The players, the majority of whom are black, took a knee, bowed their heads, and said a silent prayer in support of their fallen comrade. Many of them were in tears. Not too long ago, many of these same players took a knee during the national anthem to show their concern about a different issue that impacts their community i.e. police brutality with a racial bias. QB Colin Kaepernick paid dearly for his expression.

When in church, we genuflect as a sign of respect and devotion. When we propose marriage, we get down one knee to show our sincerity and supplication. Maybe it’s possible that the NFL players were praying on one knee in both of their situations to ask God for his mercy and deliver them from evil.

December 31, 2022

There was an interesting juxtaposition of news articles today. In 2022, Bill Gates donated $5B to the Gates Foundation. In 2020, based on his tax returns, Donald Trump gave $0. At least Ebenezer Scrooge gave a goose to Tiny Tim at Christmas, and not a goose egg. Donald Trump was the Presidential candidate, who claimed to be worth $10B in 2016. I guess he had a set back, which answers the question about his NFT trading cards.

In 2019, Donald J. Trump was forced to pay more than $2 million in court-ordered damages to eight different charities for illegally misusing charitable funds at the Trump Foundation for political purposes. The Attorney General said, “Charities are not a means to an end.” The foundation was forced to close its doors.

I don’t think being a mega donor to charity qualifies one as a candidate for President. Bill Gates ran Microsoft, but I don’t want him running the country. However, abusing the tax laws regarding charitable contributions on the one hand, and then being parsimonious to a fault on the other certainly should disqualify one from holding office. “Charity begins at home,” and, in Donald Trump’s case, that was as far as it went.

December 28, 2022

The Republican Party is killing itself. It might be considered a Trump-assisted suicide. Studies suggest that for decades public health decisions in states controlled by Republicans on issues such as Medicaid, gun legislation, tobacco taxes, and vaccines have led to higher Republican death rates. Republican-led states pushed back on COVID lockdowns, and the impact on population death rates was observed within weeks. Other factors such as more poverty, less education, and worse socioeconomic conditions could explain the higher death rates in Republican-leaning places, but this is hardly comforting.

The Grand Old Party was already shrinking anyway as the crazies and fabricators took over, which drove the moderates out. Millennials and GenZoomers clearly prefer the Democratic agenda as witnessed in the last few elections. Voters who were born into Republican families continue to vote for Republicans because they can’t imagine doing anything else. I think many of them are just voting against Democrats. However, these voters are aging out, and this process is being hastened by the party’s own agenda.

To paraphrase Benny Thompson, the chairman of the January 6th hearings, “When you cast a vote, you expect it to be counted, and you expect candidates to respect the results. That is part of the deal.” Trump saw the 2020 elections not as part of the deal, but as the art of the steal. Now, after a long-delayed, complete audit of his culpability, his tax bill is coming due, so to speak.

Trump’s Christmas grift to his loyal followers are his NFT digital trading cards. There is not much more to say on this subject, which has been lampooned unmercifully. The art of the deal for Trump is to find P.T. Barnum’s suckers that seem to be born every minute. His MO is to separate his supporters from the rest of us, and then separate them from their money.

Trump’s tax records clearly show that his business acumen was limited to the selling of

his inherited assets, and grifting off of the Presidency. Trump’s DC property could have been called the Quid Pro Hotel. He bilked the taxpayers at his properties for exorbitant room rates for his Secret Service detail, which was also being paid for by the tax payers. Maybe his worst offenses involve his undocumented, charitable, cash contributions, which is ironic given his distaste for anything undocumented. Merry Griftmas!

December 15, 2022

Most decent Americans have celebrated the return of Brittney Griner in a prisoner swap for an international arms dealer. Knee-jerk Republicans have cried “What about Paul Whelan?” despite the fact that he was taken during the Trump administration, and Trump turned his back on a swap.

Now, Gov. Ron Dinsanity wants to launch an inquisition of the people who brought us the COVID vaccine because that is what is wrong with Florida. Maybe Ron the Con should propose a Trump for Fauci swap with the state of New York. He could extradict Trump to New York to face ongoing prosecutions, and clear the field for his 2024 Presidential aspirations. Then, he could detain Dr. Fauci to put him on trial for not killing three million more Americans.

Despite the Republican polls, Dinsanity has about as much currency as FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried, who is waiting extradition from the Bahamas. SBF is apparently guilty of fraud in the form of an old-fashioned Ponzi scheme. How retro? His promises of financial rewards were backed by bits and bobs, and not Bitcoins. Similarly, RD promises to fraudulently fight the culture wars only to back away when the lights are turned off. Hopefully, our only choice in 2024 will not be a trade of Trump for DiSantis.

December 12, 2022

As we were driving through the predominately Italian, Dyker Heights section of Brooklyn the other night, gawking at what has to be one of the largest neighborhood displays of Christmas lights in the country, I thought of Brooklyn’s own Dr. Anthony Fauci, and his farewell address in the New York Times. I also thought about the scurrilous attacks made on his reputation and the threats made on his life by criminally ignorant right wingers.

Dr. Fauci loyally served seven Presidents. He led us through a once in a century pandemic that left over a million people dead while dealing with a puerile President focused on UV light, hydroxychloroquine, Ivermectin, bleach, and his poll numbers. Right wing politicians all over the country used Dr. Fauci as a convenient punching bag and scapegoat. Almost as heinous were those who accused Dr. Fauci of profiting from the Chinese, conspiring with the Chinese to cover up the source of the COVID pandemic, and asserting that he was culpable somehow in six million deaths worldwide.

Dr. Fauci, a graduate of Holy Cross, arguably saved hundreds of thousands of lives. “We are living now in an era, I believe, where there is so much distortion of reality, conspiracy theory and untruths,” he said. Hopefully, in the spirit of Christmas, people will finally see the lights.

December 8, 2022

Democrats are ecstatic over Raphael Warnock’s win over Herschel Walker in the Georgia Senate race, giving them control of the Senate by a 51-49 margin. Warnock won with 51.4% of the vote. I am a little less sanguine because Herschel Walker inexplicably got 48.6% of the vote. In other words, almost half of the voters of Georgia voted for a seriously flawed candidate. Walker wasn’t a disgrace to his race. He was a disgrace to his gender. This should give Democrats pause. If one of the worst Senatorial candidates in history, a candidate who made Roy Moore look good, could do that well, what could a normal person have done?

Trump endorsed a clown car of candidates from all over the country, all of whom lost. If the Republicans ever get their act together, which is a whole other discussion, they could easily control all three branches of government. After all, they did win back control of the House, giving right wing nuts like MTG a platform for their lunacy. While I would like to think that the demographic tide is going out on Trumpism, the results seem to tell another story.

December 5, 2022

I was sitting in a bar in Florida, being forced to listen to the guy next me rant about Joe Biden and inflation. Apparently, Joe Biden’s pro-inflation agenda has been way more effective than I ever knew. It turns out that Biden has exported rampant inflation all over the world. Prices in Turkey are skyrocketing to their highest levels in decades. Inflation is running at double digit levels in England. Inflation in Russia is in the 12-13% range. Putin is presumably blaming it on President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.

We need a Republican in the White House, who will jawbone inflation down by focusing on Hunter Biden, the LGBTQ+ community, Critical Race Theory, and abortion. Economists everywhere are waiting nervously to see what effect Republican tax cuts will have on dampening inflation. As far as I could tell, planes were at capacity, restaurants were full, and private clubs had long waiting lists of prospective members. I didn’t see anyone crying in their martinis about the price of their martinis. It seems that the people who are sitting on the nicest barstools and complaining the most about inflation are those that are the least affected.

December 2, 2022

It was 6:30AM, and I was trying to enjoy my free breakfast at a Florida Marriott, which is always difficult in the best of circumstances. Unfortunately for me, two Trumpists decided to have a conversation across the room, which was impossible to ignore. Thanks for sharing.

The louder of the two was a chiropractor pretending to be a doctor, virologist, and ethicist. He cited numerous people that took the vaccine, and now have long-term issues because of it. He believed in freedom of choice, and that it wasn’t any of the government’s business to get involved. He complained that children today have to take a hundred vaccine shots versus four or five when he was a child. Parents should be free to skip things like polio shots. He said that people don’t understand the havoc that vaccines wreak on the body. There was no mention of the more than 1,000,000 Americans, who died from COVID.

He said that Hershel Walker was a victim. You know how women are. They stalk these professional athletes just to get pregnant, and then get abortions. And, regarding Jerry Jones, who didn’t prevent black students from attending high school back in the day. He was a teenager. You know, kids being kids. He claimed to be a devout Christian, and proved it one day when he told a black man that we were all brothers. And his close was, “I am the least bigoted person you know.”