October 15, 2022

The primary strategy employed by Republicans in order to win the 2022 mid-term elections is to blame Joe Biden for inflation. While he may bear some responsibility by handing out too much cash during the pandemic, that was a long time ago and does not explain worldwide inflation today. Inflation today can be blamed on a lot of factors outside of his control, but that is not how the blame game works. When you are the President, you get blamed rightly or wrongly for everything that happens on your watch. Given that premise, let’s start playing the blame game.

Donald Trump is responsible for one of the worst economies under any President despite an oversized and unpaid for tax cut. During his four years, the economy grew only 1.6% annually, which was the country’s worst performance since Herbert Hoover. You say there was a pandemic, but that is not how the blame game is played. You take the job, you take the blame, which was something Trump was never very good at. He was, in fact, the Blamer-in-Chief.

Barack Obama, who was responsible for America’s carnage according to Trump, actually grew the economy 2.1% annually for eight years, but many Republicans considered this too tepid. He was dealt a bad hand by the previous President, inheriting the Great Recession, but that is the way it goes. He gets the credit or the blame, depending on how you look at it.

George W. Bush inherited one of the best economies of all time, and ran it into a ditch, growing the U.S. economy at a 1.8% annual rate. He presided over the Great Recession. Admittedly, he had a lot of help ruining the economy from Congress, regulators, banks, mortgage companies, ratings agencies and others, but he gets the blame because that is how it works.

It looks like Bill Clinton may be one of the great Presidents of all time. He gets credit for a whopping 3.7% growth rate for eight years. I guess he was good at multi-tasking.

Bush 1.0 generated 2.0 growth. Ronald Reagan, considered by many Republicans to be one of the great Presidents, produced 3.4% growth during his tenure while Jimmy Carter, considered by the same people to be one of the worst Presidents, also generated 3.4%.

In the end, it is easier to just blame the President for everything, whether or not he has any control or influence over the factors that drive the economy. Thanks for playing the game.

October 14, 2022

Never Trumpers have obsessed for years on the possibility that the alleged pee pee tape actually exists. It may be a legend like the Yeti, or a conspiracy theory like a rigged election. It may emerge some day, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. We may find out about the puff of smoke from the grassy knoll in Dallas before we see the pee pee tape. Only Putin knows, but he is somewhat distracted at the present time.

Yesterday, we had the opportunity to see even more footage of the catastrophe that occurred on January 6th. Courtesy of her daughter, we see Nancy Pelosi, the 5’5”, 82 year old mother of five and grandmother to many taking charge as others looked on. In sync with her age and style, she referred to the defecation in the Capitol as “poo poo.” Unlike the pee pee tape, everyone got to see the poo poo tape. While Pelosi was running the show, in direct contrast to Steven Scalise’s lies about her involvement, we witnessed the abject dereliction of duty by Donald Trump. Hopefully, he will be held accountable for all of his poo poo.

October 10, 2022

Herschel Walker epitomizes everything that the Republican Party has become. In the GOP’s race to the bottom, they found the candidate that tells you everything you need to know about today’s Republicans.

Walker, like his fellow Republicans, favors a federal ban on all abortions with no exceptions despite that fact that he paid his girl friend for one abortion, and asked her to have another. The GOP wants to tell us what we can and cannot do with our lives, but have no interest in accepting their own advice. Walker is all for the Second Amendment, which allowed him to have a gun and put it up to the head of an ex-wife.. When presented with incontrovertible evidence about his transgressions, he lied, a tactic he learned from the master. Lying is a hallmark of the Republican Party. When confronted with the truth, they lie and deflect. That is now the GOP playbook.

He has no interest in understanding climate change, never mind proposing solutions to address it. His response to a question put to him was unintelligible at best. Something about China and good air versus bad air. Denying climate change would be a major plank of the Republican platform if they actually had one

Sadly, Herschel Walker is what Republicans think a black man is. To them, a black man is a barely literate, promiscuous individual, who has several children by several women, and then abandons them. Their view of black men is clearly articulated by Alabama Senator and former Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville. Black men prefer crime, and they want to take what you have. They want to brainwash your children with critical race theory. They want to replace you. They believe that Black Lives Matter, and yours do not.

That is today’s Republican Party. Abortion for me, and not for thee. Guns for everyone. Ignore climate change. And stoke hate and fear. Georgia and the GOP is out of its mind.

October 9, 2020

I recently heard someone making fun of Joe Biden for coming in last in his law school class. He actually placed 76th out of 85, which, according to my calculations, is not last. It wasn’t fabulous, but why ruin a good a story with the facts? That’s probably why MAGA Republicans hated war hero John McCain, who placed 894th out of 899 at the Naval Academy. Republicans like their candidates to be smart like George W. Bush, who had a GPA at Yale of 77. Biden was obviously smart enough to get into law school, but I guess that wasn’t good enough for the Commander in Chief.

For some reason, this same guy hated Barack Obama, even though Obama was smart enough to transfer from Occidental to Columbia, and then go on to become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review. He was maybe a little too smart for this guy because who would want a pointy-headed academic as President like Woodrow Wilson?

Apparently, Donald Trump hit the sweet spot for intelligence. He was smart enough to enable his father to get him into the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. He was also smart enough to threaten Wharton with a law suit if it ever released his grades. And who can forget the Mensa intelligence test he took and passed with flying colors. Person, woman, man, camera, TV. That would give me a headache. He coined the phrase “stable genius.” He said, “I am a very intelligent person,” which I guess is good enough for Republicans.

If you want to make fun of Biden, knock yourself out. It’s a free country unless you need an abortion. However, make sure you are not grading on a curve.

October 4, 2022

The Supreme Court continues its race to the right. It currently is considering a case filed against Harvard and the University of North Carolina, claiming that using race as a criterium for college admissions is discriminatory. The schools claims that race is only one of many factors that they consider (grades, class rank, recommendations, alumni interviews, extracurricular activities, contributions to communities, etc.) in making their decisions. They also claim that having a diverse student body enhances the education that students receive by exposing them to others from radically different walks of life.

Conservatives are not buying the arguments, and the Court will most likely decide in favor of the plaintiffs. Race will no longer be allowed to be considered by admissions committees. However, I don’t think all is lost. Race was likely a shorthand anyway for students who were economically disadvantaged. For example, how do you compare an applicant coming from a broken home, living in a ghetto, attending a substandard school, and having barely enough to eat with a student from a private prep school with all of the advantages? I think that it is clearly not discriminatory to say that, in some cases, the poor student may have done more with what he had at his disposal than the prep school student, and that he would be more likely to make a positive contribution to society. The poor student could be from any race or ethnicity..black, white, Hispanic, Asian, etc.

I think that if colleges clearly use economics rather than race as a rationale for their admissions decisions, even Conservatives would be on board.

September 19, 2022

Out of the kindness of his lizard-skinned, alligator heart, Ron DiSantis sent us two plane loads of Venezuelan immigrants. He lied to them, and made them false promises. Despicable is not a strong enough adjective. However, they were welcomed as human beings by the kind people of Martha’s Vineyard because that is what people, dare I say Christian people, do. DiSantis was the Grinch who tried to steal Christmas. In the spirit of fair play, I think we should return the favor.

Let’s start by emptying our jails. Massachusetts is no different from Florida and Texas. We have bad people behind bars. We should gather up the most dangerous criminals incarcerated in Massachusetts prisons, and send them to Palm Beach. We could tell them they are getting a new lease on life courtesy of Ron DiSantis. They would be starting their new lives at a golf resort and club called Mar-a-Lago. Trump has experience hiring illegal immigrants, and, hopefully, he will soon have personal experience with convicted felons.

We could send them bus loads, courtesy of Peter Pan Bus Lines, of QAnon disciples, telling them that they were the chosen ones to visit the promised land. They could be told that they would be participating in the coming storm originating from ground zero at Mar-a-Lago, all at the invitation of the Orange Jesus.

Lastly, we should buy and/or confiscate all of the AR-15’s in Massachusetts, and drop them off in Miami for general distribution. It would be Mass-induced chaos with everyone standing their ground. In the immortal words of Matt Damon, “How do you like them apples?”

September 16, 2022

Major League Baseball is trying to speed up the game. You know you have a problem when a baseball game takes almost as long as a round of golf. Two golfers can actually play around in less time. It has proposed a pitch clock, which should help. I have some other ideas.

Ban batting gloves. I am tired of watching hitters constantly stepping out of the batters box in order to readjust their batting gloves. Are you listening, Dustin?

Once a batter is in the batters box, lock the door. He should be able to escape only if he has to go to the men’s room.

The number of times batters strike out these days has gone up dramatically. There are many reasons. Batters swinging for the fences, and six foot eight pitchers throwing downhill at 100 miles per hour are just a couple. Strikeouts typically take longer than other at bats. Baseball did speed up the game a little bit by allowing batters to take first without the agony of having to watch four intentional balls lobbed up by the pitcher. Many batters have no chance against the likes of a Justin Verlander. Why not give batters the option of taking an automatic strikeout, and taking a seat in the dugout?

No one likes seeing the manager or pitching coach walk to the mound. It just means another delay, and a commercial timeout. Let’s have the dugout text a message to the pitcher, the catcher, and the bullpen when it is time to move on. The physical taking of the ball from the pitcher is always awkward, and often causes animosity and controversy. In lieu of texting, the dugout could bang on a trash can when it was time.

While we are on relief pitchers, can’t we just put the relief pitcher on a Segway to get him to the mound faster?

Do players really need to round the bases after hitting a home run? I know it’s fun and a part of baseball, but it takes time as the player slow walks around the infield, preening, and fist bumping the first and third base coaches. The ball is out of the park. The play is over. Move on.

September 15, 2022

E. J. Dionne recently had an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times about “Why Politicians Shouldn’t Be Stock Traders.” Americans distrust their government officials more than ever, and officials benefiting in the stock market from decisions they are making just adds to the frustration. There is a proposal to ban all members of Congress and related persons from owning securities directly. The thinking is that Congressman should not benefit from trading on inside information, which the rest of us have to abide by. As an aside, they have better things to do than trading their portfolios.

This solution may be overly restrictive. Wall St. figured this out a long time ago, and instituted procedures to prevent employees from engaging in insider trading, and trading ahead of customers. First off, Congress needs to have a dedicated “brokerage firm” handling all of its transactions. Congressmen should not be able to have their own brokers. Secondly, all transactions, both buys and sells, would have to be pre-cleared. A compliance professional would have to vet each transaction against established criteria. Third, each security would have to be held for at least one year. Finally, I personally would not want my representatives trading on margin i.e. borrowing money to invest and creating leverage.

Congressmen and their families would be free to invest in whatever securities they chose as long as those securities and transactions met the above guidelines.

September 15, 2022

Like everyone else, I read today about Florida Governor Ron DiSantis’ cynical attempt to play with the lives of immigrants. He paid for three unannounced flights to Martha’s Vineyard carrying illegal immigrants from Texas. For the record, I don’t have a home on Martha’s Vineyard, but certainly know people who do. What I find aggravating about this story is that while Florida is sending immigrants to us, we are sending money to Florida. Many of our residents retire every year, and take their hard earned savings to Florida. Florida is dependent on states like Massachusetts to keep its growth going.

Also, Florida takes more than it gives. For every dollar it sends to the federal government, it gets $1.15 back. On the other hand, Massachusetts gets only $.88 back. In other words, we are supporting and subsidizing the wasteful habits of the state of Florida. DiSantis is a Trump wannabe, and he has learned from the master as to how to operate in debt. I would suggest to DiSantis that he should be thankful to Massachusetts rather than trying to troll it.

September 9, 2022

The handcuffed Steve Brannon has maybe the best quote from the Trump years, which he is still using. When confronted with uncomfortable, maybe even treasonous, information regarding Trump, he said “flood the zone with sh*t” to defer and deflect the media. It didn’t matter whether it was true or not. It was never true. It only mattered that it came quickly and in volume. You can see the strategy at work today as Republicans come up with the reason du jour to excuse Trump’s stealing of highly classified materials, some revealing our most sensitive nuclear secrets.

Maybe the Democrats should take a page from Bannon as we approach the mid-year elections? Maybe they should flood the zone with fa*cts. Abortion kills women. Republicans deny climate change, and vote against actions to mitigate it. Republicans favor guns over children. January 6 was an insurrection. Republicans want to repeal health care, and raise taxes on middle America. Republicans want to sunset Social Security and Medicare. Trump is a guilty of fomenting the insurrection and profiting from it. Trump is the subject of numerous criminal investigations. Trump cut taxes on the rich and corporations, exacerbating the national debt. Mitch McConnell delegitimized the Supreme Court. Trump did untold damage to the institutions of government that keep us safe like the DoJ, the FBI and the CIA. Trump lied about and totally mismanaged the pandemic. The Republican Party traffics with white supremacists. Republicans voted against reducing the prices of critical drugs. Republicans have no agenda.

Republicans need to be careful about shoveling sh*t into the wind because the winds are changing.