Forever Noonan

We needn’t look far for evidence of TDS… It’s right there in the Sunday editorial pages under Peggy Noonan’s byline. Everything he does just irks her to no end. Not only did she criticize his speech, granted but one of his best, exhibiting frustration which he doesn’t hide very well, but she objected to his opening “good evening, America” claiming he was dodging addressing the people in favor of an amorphous continent, didn’t even like the way his mouth moved and even bashed him for giving the speech at the podium rather than in the Oval. Petty. She continues to pine for the days of a kinder, gentler political landscape… perhaps the kind where we were kept in the dark… and, correct me if I’m wrong, did she actually praise FDR, longing for the days of the fireside chat? An interesting comparison….in that FDR was a silver spoon elitist and the man who got the socialist ball rolling.

The System Is Rigged

Socialism and redistributon effords gone amoke. Yesterday's WSJ featured an editorial by Phil Gramm detailing how welfare recipients don’t have their benefits taxed, benefits that effectively bump them up to some $70,000 a year in untaxed income. In contrast, a family that works for the same income gets taxed. Not fair. Our social programs actually reduce the 10% estimated poverty rate to 1% when benefits are included, but the government chooses to ignore it. And look at New York’s supposed property tax benefit for retirees. Property taxes can be reduced by up to 50% if income does not exceed $58K. But, are welfare benefits counted as income?  Of course not. As we are discovering, the system is ripe for fraud, and without oversight, it is being abused to the detriment of taxpayers.

Our Founders Forewarned

As is the case in most countries, including here in the US, cities are not representative of the traditional culture, morals, and politics of the folks who inhabit the heartland. Look at Paris, London, New York, San Francisco, Brussels, Berlin……all liberal strongholds with booming immigrant populations. Amazing that the Founding Fathers predicted cities would become too powerful a voting bloc and sought to limit that power with safeguards like the Electoral College. Unfortunately, land ownership was eliminated as a prerequisite, and now even the Electoral College faces criticism from the left. John Adams had it right, fearing that we would be governed by those with no skin in the game, or, worse, by men of power with the resources to coerce their votes.

I Am In A Funk

I have always been very supportive of “public servants”. Teachers, firefighters, the military, cops, and even elected officials, but within these last few years, as I approached retirement I have noted there is a sinister, self-serving motive in a segment of that population. A segment that has figured out how to work the system to lower their risk of exposure and feather their nests. Not nice. At one time, it was a trade-off; you accepted a lower salary, knowing you were going to be on the job for fewer years than your private sector counterparts, but then reap the reward of a healthy pension and healthcare for the rest of your life. Those days are over. Although the pensions have been reduced to percentages of your highest earning years….another scam whereby the pension is based on two or three consecutive years of averaged earnings, resulting in cops and firefighters socking in a couple of years of overtime to bump their salaries into, in the case of NYC firefighters as much as $225K or more, to qualify for 50 to 75 percent of that doled out by the taxpayers for the rest of their lives. This is why the NYC fire department saw a rash of retirements shortly after 9/11, when overtime spiked in the wake of the disaster. Currently, after 20 years on the job, they are entitled to 50%, with an increase of 1% every 6 months thereafter, up to a maximum of 75%. And to think that at one time, “tier one” workers retired at 100% of their salary. Not a bad deal. At one time, the defense of that spending was that the plan was self-funded… but that is no longer the case, with exorbitant payouts exhausting returns on investment and, with longer lifespans, more retirees than employees. Not exactly an economically sustainable system. Of course, the argument is that many of these cops and firefighters risked their lives in service to the public. Acknowledged. But many sat in administrative positions where the biggest danger was a paper cut. And like every government organization, they tend to be top-heavy with too many redundant administrative positions. And certain jurisdictions have policing and firefighting duties that carry more risk than others. Some suburban firefighters may have a ladder truck but serve a town with no structures over two stories. Similarly, comparing policing a densely populated urban area to a sleepy suburban enclave is impossible. My point is that not all police and firefighter jobs carry the same risk or commitment. Yet, a savvy government employee can effectively work the system, or by virtue of luck alone, reap benefits seemingly disproportionate to their service. And this becomes glaringly apparent when government jobs are compared to similar jobs in the private sector. At one time, the aforementioned lower salaries of government employees were a sacrifice for retirement perks. That has not been the case for years. Private-sector jobs have fallen behind comparable government jobs in compensation. If one uses the 4% withdrawal rule for retirement, a private-sector worker would need to accumulate $3 million in their pension plan to withdraw a salary of $ 120,000 a year, and that doesn’t include healthcare benefits beyond Medicare. And that’s including a career with a likely retirement age of 65 or more. Currently, the retirement age stands at 66 and 9 months. A government employee with 32 years on the job needs only a maximum salary of $160K to achieve the same $120K salary in retirement, including additional healthcare benefits. Three consecutive years averaging a $240K salary would yield the same $120K return after just 10 years on the job, potentially allowing for an early 40s retirement and a second career. Even the military has seen similar bloat, with the ratio of brass to enlisted men increasing exponentially. More Pentagon pencil pushers and administrative brass only result in comfortable positions stateside, riding their armchairs to retirement pensions without ever risking deployment to a war zone.  Recent VP candidate Tim Walz is a perfect example of how his years of reserve duty, collecting a salary and posing as a soldier, were cut short when he abruptly resigned after his unit was threatened with deployment. His seriousness and military preparedness were aptly demonstrated when he was unable to competently load his shotgun during a publicity stunt to pander to rural voters by posing as a hunter. And yes, he still collects a military pension for his….ahem….service. But nothing compares to our bloated public education system, where the teachers' union has gamed the system for maximum rewards. Teachers achieve “tenure” after four years on the job and are rewarded with job security, totally independent of performance. The constant addition of fabricated resource days, superintendent days, and conferences, along with the inclusion of minority holidays such as the Chinese Lunar New Year and Diwali as days off in the school year, results in our children spending only 180 days a year in the classroom. And we wonder why our test scores are abysmal. Once again, the public school system is top-heavy, most glaringly at the college level, where bloated budgets and absurd progressive policies result in more DEI officers on campus than professors in the history department. School lunch programs and after-school babysitting services, along with the expansion of school campuses to include state-of-the-art weight rooms and swimming pools, in addition to hordes of administrators, result in swollen budgets that increase the expenditure per student, when the fact remains that there is no correlation between the amount spent per student and academic achievement. A case in point: when a resident of a wealthy lakeside community questioned why his next-door neighbor had an expensive home, drove expensive cars, yet always seemed to be home tending to his lawn early in the afternoon, he came to discover that he was the superintendent of schools with a $250K salary. Apparently commonplace in large school districts and tony suburban enclaves. With little to no oversight. Once again, not a bad deal. For the superintendent, not so much for the taxpayers. We value the service provided by our public sector workers and agree they should be rewarded for it. But when the taxpayer’s return on investment is diminished and we become a piggy bank, when public workers unions negotiate exorbitant retirement packages and benefits far in excess of what a comparable worker can achieve in the private sector, when our taxes are escalating out of control to feed the voracious beast that is government, then perhaps it is time that we reexamine our pact with those who purport to serve us.

Lies and Distortions

First, Jeffries is outright lying about not knowing Epstein, who contributed to his campaign and had been solicited for more donations from Jeffries himself. And, we have Plaskett, the mad texter, who had Epstein engaged in his island shenanigans on an island she represents. Granted, playing dumb comes naturally to her, but this is ridiculous. Plaskett herself, along with Raskin, claimed that she was getting “information” from a constituent. And, then we have the wayward astronaut, Kelly, and his band of mental incompetents, including the remarkably offensive little troll Crow, fomenting mutiny in our military?  This is insane! Alas, all the characters in this theater of the absurd know that there are no consequences for their lies and treasonous acts, where some might warrant a firing squad.

Subliminal Conditioning

 If you want to be celebrated in the media, you'd better toe the party line and spew their talking points. It’s insidious. Just look at how it’s crept into advertising and television. Even children’s programming. It’s almost formulaic. You need a particular mixture of gay, Black, Hispanic, and Asian characters. And now somebody has to be in a hijab,  and the woman has to be in a position of power, and preferably there should be a mixed-race couple, ideally with a child….and even better if they’re gay. All subliminal messaging to satisfy the left so they will praise your product or your television show to buy your product. It’s all about the cash in the end. So cynical. 

Documentary Doctoring

According to the WSJ review, Ken Burns, darling of PBS and the left, turned his documentary on the American Revolution into a leftist harangue on the evils of slavery, the poor treatment of Blacks and Native Americans and the sins of our Founding Fathers, all property-owning, slave-owning white men who by virtue of their wealth, gender, race and status got to make all the decisions that formed this reprehensible country of ours. Really, Ken? Fortunately, by all accounts, most Americans found this so-called documentary to be both distorted and deceptive in its portrayal of what prompted the English American colonies to revolt. Yet, just another attempt to besmirch America as a nation,  a culture, a democracy.

Ever Sniping

The stock market has been on a tear, but today is slipping amid fears of poor economic data following the government shutdown. But wasn’t that the ‘rats strategy all along?  With nothing to offer, they are attacking all things Trump, even the economy, to try and ding his record of success heading into the midterms. Willing to leverage the payment of TSA, air traffic controllers, and the military, along with providing benefits to food stamp recipients, just to get their way with healthcare subsidies, should make their willingness to tank our investment savings unsurprising. And the media doing their best to convince us that we’re knee deep in a recession. So now they’re trying to talk us into an economic downturn?  Diabolical.

Hail Britannia

An interesting BBC article this morning featured seven historians rating the top US presidents. With Reagan, Washington, Lincoln, and Teddy Roosevelt making the list, it is notable that the BBC also selected FDR, LBJ, and Obama. Not only are they the most recent presidents to make the cut, but they are all essentially socialists, lauded for introducing or expanding the welfare state. Given the recent discovery that the BBC had doctored Trump’s speech to make it appear that he incited the Jan 6 debacle, is it any surprise that a news organization representing a failed empire devolving into socialism and government oppression praises the US presidents who have tried to emulate their own disastrous lurch to the left?

Chicago Celebrates

I fail to understand how the Chicago Tribune celebrated the city’s “growing resistance to Operation Midway Blitz” while it ignored the fact that 2024 was the first time that fewer than 600 citizens were murdered, another statistic that was actually praised for showing a downward trend.  Hooray, only 600 murdered!  And how many others were shot and managed to survive? Are they actually implying that all of Chicago is now safe to walk the streets after dark?  Journalism at its worst.

The Die Is Cast

Just goes to show you that a well-qualified black female conservative in Virginia (Earle-Sears) will lose to a pasty white progressive every time, so much for DEI. Had it been the other way around, they would have been screaming racism. Turns out that race is only a multiplier in the equation, where the perpetuation of redistribution and government handouts are ultimately the deciding factors in garnering the minority vote. Even Jay Jones was able to overcome his heinous character flaws by virtue of embracing progressive policy multiplied by race. It’s no wonder that the democrats keep steering us down the road to socialism when it is increasingly apparent that the formula for success is appealing to the public sector and those that survive on government handouts by perpetuating the culture of the nanny state, offering something for nothing. Character and a moral compass appear to be secondary considerations for progressive candidates. 

Democrat Gloat

And here come the Democrats claiming that the victories in these gubernatorial elections are a rebuke of Trump. Really? NYC engaged in egregious lawfare tactics to indict him for a bookkeeping misdemeanor, not to mention finding him liable for defending himself from a nutcase who claims he assaulted her, yet can’t recall when and has no witnesses. Hostile progressive territory that produced the likes of Jeffries, Schumer, AOC, and Nadler. Congratulations. New Jersey is a deep blue morass of failed leftist policy, with population density in Camden County, Newark, and the north Jersey commuter suburbs that are a reflection of the city across the Hudson. Virginia elections are dominated by the beneficiaries in Richmond and Hampton/Newport News, as well as the government officials in the DC-adjacent suburbs to the north. No surprises there… all democrat strongholds wallowing in high taxes, traffic, unsustainable public pensions, corruption, and crime. You get what you vote for!

The Mamdani Effect

What’s going to happen is that the Feds are going to cut off funding to the city, and the wealthy will flee. As a result, upstate, which relies on the larger downstate population to fund the state’s socialist programs, will end up sharing more of the tax burden. The Democrats have succeeded in reaching a critical mass, where there are more government workers and welfare recipients than higher-income workers in the private sector, such that patriotism and what’s good for the country have been supplanted by an attitude of “what handouts will benefit me most.” Think about it, New Yorkers in the private sector: what exactly do you get in return for paying 13% income tax, 8% sales tax, and exorbitant property taxes?  Crumbling infrastructure, poor-performing public schools, unsustainable public workers' pensions, a sanctuary for illegal immigrants, soaring utility costs, and now a communist mayor running the financial capital of the world. What could possibly go wrong?

Handwriting On The Wall

It’s become increasingly apparent that Democrat politicians can’t hear themselves when they speak. It’s the only explanation other than lumping them all into the category of opportunistic hypocrites. Gavin Newsom, who has been known for his peculiar hand gestures lately, appeared on Meet the Press, where he received gentle handling by Kristin Welker. Posing once again as a defender of democracy, he accused the president of “rigging” next year’s congressional election. “He’s changing the rules.  He’s rigging the game because he knows he’ll lose if all things are equal,” said Newsome, ignoring the democrats' long history of gerrymandering, resulting in lopsided majorities in states like New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and California, where the proportions of Democrat versus republican legislators far exceed the proportion of registered voters for each party. But then Newsome really went tone deaf: “He did not expect California to fight fire with fire.”  Ouch. Now, in a state stricken by wildfires, including the most recent disaster that torched the Pacific Palisades, a community unable to rebuild due to California’s torturous permitting regulations, wouldn’t you think the Governor would have chosen a different analogy?  Perhaps something without fire in it? They are simply tone deaf

Disenfranchised American Heroes

I shouldn’t listen to Breitbart in the morning. Sometimes it gets me depressed as to the state of our America. This morning, Slater was discussing architecture and art as related to government buildings and statues, particularly observing how hideous it has become. Witness Obama’s blight on Chicago’s south side with a library that looks like its inspiration was an Eastern Bloc stairwell from The Bourne Identity. Put treads on it, and it could be rambling around Tatooine looking for scrap. Even the New York Times opined that democrats create hideous architecture. But most upsetting has been the fate of our historical statues that succumbed to the Charleston and the Black Lives Matter protests.  I understand that these monuments are a trigger for those on the left, who seem to be outraged at everything that doesn’t fit their worldview. But, like it or not, they are choosing not only to erase history but also to do it vindictively. The Robert E. Lee statue, for example, was melted down, its demise recorded, disseminated, and celebrated by the left. But far worse than being melted down is outright desecration. Statues are being used as “material”: altered, vandalized, spray-painted, and distorted. The Stonewall Jackson Memorial, a statue depicting the Confederate General on horseback, was donated to The Brick, formerly LAXART an art center in LA, who allowed the controversial painter/activist Kara Walker to disassemble the statue and piece it back together in a grotesque, distorted hideous work of “art” now displayed at the Museum of Art Los Angeles who claims the exhibit “topples white supremacy.”  The LA Times, in a glowing review, called it a “monstrous mutant” that “pushes back against white supremacy I would call it a tasteless, disrespectful disregard for our nation’s history. Recall General Jackson’s career began by heroically serving in the Mexican Wars after graduating from the US Military Academy at West Point. Born in what is now West Virginia, he naturally served with the Confederacy, distinguishing himself at Bull Run but ultimately losing an arm to friendly fire and succumbing to pneumonia. And now rewarded for his sacrifice and service to the United States before being on the wrong side of the Mason-Dixon Line, he is brutalized in death by being hideously transformed into an object of ridicule by an activist who has made a career “highlighting the impact of slavery” and calling it art. I am embarrassed we let this happen.

Under The ICBM

The Atlantic was at it again, publishing an interview with the makers of the film, The House of Dynamite, where a nuclear missile targeting the US is launched from an unknown source, and our government officials have only 20 minutes to respond. The horrifying aspect of the film is the fact that the system of nuclear response and deterrence is set up for rapid retaliation, whereby a chain of military command that practices the scenario twice a day makes recommendations to the president, who receives only one nuclear briefing but who holds the nuclear “football” and is ultimately responsible for the decision on how to respond. There’s no time to form a committee. No time to ask Congress. With a missile incoming, the president and his immediate staff have 20 minutes to decide on a course of action. The strategy thus far has been one of mutually assured destruction. You launch at me, and I will launch at you. And with thousands of warheads aimed at major cities, we would essentially annihilate each other, thus keeping each other in check. That worked well when there existed two nuclear powers, the US and Russia. However, today, there are at least nine nuclear states, with varying degrees of hostility, some of which possess delivery systems that would make it very difficult to determine who is responsible for a launch, with submarines being the most challenging to detect. It’s an interesting film and a topic that has largely become less of a concern as the public has lapsed into a sort of nuclear complacency since the end of the Cold War. But the Atlantic being the Atlantic, where exactly did you think this interview was going to go? Two Hollywood filmmakers and an Atlantic reporter couldn’t resist taking a hard left turn into the land of Trump derangement syndrome. They praised Clinton, Yeltsin, Gorbachev, and even Reagan for an era of nuclear detente and reductions in nuclear arsenals, achieved through SALT provisions. So now we have 1500 warheads each…..if you can believe the Russians….so we are only able to obliterate each other ten times over rather than a hundred. Well done. But they criticized Trump for his combative and retaliatory personality traits, suggesting that he couldn’t be trusted to make such decisions regarding potential nuclear armageddon. They even suggested that Trump was increasing our nuclear arsenal in the NATO states, potentially antagonizing our enemies. But hold on a second. The Atlantic is criticizing and questioning the competence of a president who has effectively stopped eight wars and is working on his ninth in less than a year in office. Further, he is a president who projected US air power into the Middle East to prevent Iran from becoming another nuclear state, and a highly unstable one at that. The world has changed significantly since the fall of the Berlin Wall. With nine nuclear powers jostling for position on the world stage we have one of the major players, Russia, not only on the move militarily seeking to expand its territory but also outright threatening to employ tactical nukes in Ukraine while antagonizing NATO countries in the west with aerial incursions, China is expanding its military presence and threatening Taiwan and its neighbors and seeking to control shipping lanes in the South Pacific, a rogue North Korea is continually advancing its ballistic missile program and provocatively lobbing missiles into the Sea of Japan while threatening to be able to reach the continental US, nuclear armed India and Pakistan are continually engaged in border skirmishes, hostile Arab states surround Israel, and the UK and France sit on the sidelines amidst social and political upheaval at home. It’s a more volatile world. But who would you rather have in possession of the nuclear football?  Never did they mention that in the previous four years, the world relied on Biden in rapid mental and physical decline to determine our fate in the event of a nuclear standoff. Perhaps the auto pen would step in and save us all. And does anyone have any confidence that the vacuous Kamala Harris has the mental acuity to deal with decisions at this existential level?  Please. The woman recently claimed that “some people” think she was the most qualified candidate ever to run for president. She’s absolutely delusional. And who else do we have to draw on from the left to make these decisions? Such Democratic luminaries as Newsome, Jeffries, Crockett, Schumer, Schiff, and AOC?  Please. None of these people are serious. Trump has proven himself to be an adept negotiator, establishing personal relationships with contentious foreign leaders, especially those in possession of nuclear hardware. In a dangerous world, he has proven himself to be a man of peace, but not one to appease our adversaries. I’m talking to you, Obama. So, the Atlantic remains true to form, choosing to remain a bastion of anti-Trump activism at the expense of non-partisan journalism, and in this case, sacrificing what could have been a review bringing attention to a thought-provoking movie, instead using it as a vehicle for another round of Trump bashing.

The People's House

I’ve about had enough of these liberal idiots screaming about Trump tearing down the useless East Wing of the White House to construct the big beautiful ballroom. Somehow, they are suddenly concerned about tearing down history when, in fact, the White House has been modified, added to, and gutted numerous times by previous presidents. Get a grip already. FACT: The East Wing has been a largely unused set of offices for the First Lady, correspondence staff, the social secretary, a calligraphy and graphics office, and a theater. It sits on top of a bunker that is to remain intact. FACT: The White House does not have a satisfactory function room to host large gatherings, which is why tents are often erected to provide the space for formal affairs. In case you hadn’t noticed, Washington is built on a swamp and tends to get hot and sticky in the summer months, making tents impractical and, frankly, not befitting formal gatherings for heads of state.  FACT: Trump is using his own money and donations for the project with no expenses passed on to the taxpayers. FACT: The argument that it is the “people’s house” is beyond preposterous. If it’s your house, try stopping by unannounced and see how that goes. The last time some folks entered another one of the people’s houses, that being the Capitol building, they were hunted down and jailed. Ashli Babbitt, a military veteran who was unarmed, was shot dead by Capitol police for climbing through a window. Apparently, they’re not your houses at all; you just pay for them. FACT: Nobody on the left seemed to care when historic monuments, including statues of Columbus, Jefferson Davis, Thomas Jefferson, assorted Confederate Generals, Teddy Roosevelt, and the Howitzer Memorial, to name a few, were torn down or defaced in the left’s last display of woke insanity during the “mostly peaceful” summer of love. Not a word. Suddenly, the East Wing of the White House is now a priceless historic artifact whose destruction to make way for something suitably functional causes outrage on the left. Al Green keeps telling us that it’s a disgusting example of the enslavement of human beings. I suppose when they have nothing else to rally around, we get this nonsense. I’m running out of recommendations. Grow up? Get a life? Suck it up? Get a grip. Go ahead, choose one. 

Democracy Teetering

Last night on FOX and this morning on Beck, they both reported on the prevalence of seemingly rational, well-spoken, and presumably educated, middle-class or above, white people participating in the “No Kings” rallies calmly and rationally wishing for, and in some cases, outright calling for the death of our president. Reviewing the demographics of these rallies, it is interesting to note that the vast majority of protests occurred in liberal strongholds, where there is no threat of a conservative candidate ever being elected to local government, and often the democrats run unopposed. Boston, LA, NYC, Chicago, and San Francisco are all liberal bastions of lawlessness and progressive policy, apparently content with the status quo and infuriated that they lost the presidential election. Recall how rural America rioted after Obama was elected. Oh, yeah…..they didn’t. Tell me again who the threat to democracy is. Mocking Charlie Kirk’s death, repeatedly calling the opposition Nazis, and suggesting that the current president is either a king or Hitler, whilst you are allowed to protest and the minority party has shut down the government, are not opinions reflective of your own self-assertion that you are the non-violent, well-educated supporters of democracy. You auditioned for that during the George Floyd protests, where you proved yourselves to be easily influenced partisan lemmings unable to produce a presidential candidate of substance. Kicking the can down the road and supporting socialism while tolerating an unsustainable national debt, an expanding welfare state, increasing taxes, spiraling crime, open borders, dependence on foreign energy, a degraded military footprint globally, while sending our manufacturing sector, particularly pharmaceuticals and microchips, overseas, is hardly a set of policies brought to you by a group of intellectuals. TDS is the most likely diagnosis; otherwise, one has to consider an insidious attempt to destroy America, or just face the fact that the tipping point has been reached, with more dependent on government handouts than those contributing to the GDP. The leftist infatuation with illegal immigration is a perfect example. A recent Dutch study, as reported by Breitbart, showed the disturbing fact that sub-Saharan immigrants into that country cost the taxpayers an average of $1.1 million per immigrant. And roughly a third of them committed crimes. Other Muslim immigrant groups were not much better. Shouldn’t we be more selective about who we allow into the country? Of course not, let’s just virtue signal some more and leave the border unattended. Sure, that’ll work. And whatever happened to the “no oligarchs” tour by avowed socialists AOC and her geriatric sidekick, the hypocrite at large, Bernie Sanders?  The recent “No Kings” rallies were funded by none other than George Soros, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and Bill Gates, a collection of oligarchs if there ever was one. I will never buy a vehicle with a blue oval again. So as the president who has stopped eight wars works on stopping another, and toils for the betterment of America, accomplishing more in 8 months than Biden did in four years, receives nothing but hate and hypocrisy from the left, conservatives remain perplexed that the democrats and their complicit media continue to demonstrate that they are not only violent, but they are the actual threat to democracy.

Off With Their Heads

A farmer friend from upstate NY lamented to me in so many words, "Here we go again with the no kings” protests." " How absurd can they be?" he espoused. Yes, another simple slogan from the left to appeal to their simple-minded base. If you can’t fit it on a bumper sticker, it won’t appeal to the ADHD crowd on the left. He said, It started last evening in his small town with a bunch of disgruntled old white people holding signs on the street corner that had no basis in reality and addressed left-wing media talking points that do not affect their daily lives. I surmise it was just a chance to dress up and pretend you’re a hippy in time for Halloween.  We love our immigrants unconditionally, the Progressives are advising us. I guess that includes the ones who arrived here illegally, are supported by our tax dollars, and are committing heinous crimes against Americans? Sure, that makes sense. I wonder if it ever crossed their little minds that if Donald Trump were really a king, he wouldn’t allow these protests and would throw these dissidents into a dungeon. He would also open the government, at least the 11 percent of it that is actually closed, and order the fat cats in Congress to stop running their mouths and do their jobs. Or, maybe off with their heads. Now there’s an idea. Maybe having a king wouldn’t be such a bad thing after all. 

Noonan Disappoints

I see this past weekend that Peggy Noonan had focused her ire on Pete Hegseth. She still managed to take a few shots, mind you, at Trump as well, but the Secretary of War was lambasted as a “drama queen”, and in a real underhanded shot, not “sober.” Face it, old haggard Peggy longs for the days of cigar-smoking fat cats cutting deals in back rooms and presenting to the American public a steely-eyed face of power with no transparency. Think Dick Cheney. It’s laughable that the media craves transparency. Still, when they get it from our conservative elected officials, they parse every comment, criticize everything from the presentation to the message, and then wonder why the government becomes less transparent. Trump doesn’t care and lets them have it with both barrels, setting records for administrative exposure and press conferences.

Peggy surmised that Hegseth makes America look “what our foes say we are, a place of make-believe freedom in which even the press is controlled by the government.” Really Peggy?  Compared to what? This may come as a shock to you, but half the government does control the press. The democrat half, not to mention all their deep state progressive warriors in unelected positions inside the beltway and in courtrooms across the nation. I assume you’ve heard of NPR. And they were funded by the government. Sure, Hegseth may be marginally out of his depth. Still, his cheerleading approach is having a positive effect, with military recruitment skyrocketing after it languished in the woke years of the Biden and Obama administrations. He is restoring pride in the military branches, which may not resonate with the civilian overseers, but it sure does with the rank and file. Also interesting to note that on the page opposite Nonnan’s diatribe appeared two letters to the editor from retired military brass bemoaning the culture of woke permeating the military and praising our goal to return to a condition of readiness based on merit. 

Political Theater

I can’t believe the WSJ is buying into this “government shutdown” charade. What a crock. 87% of the government considers itself “essential” and therefore NEVER shuts down. Mark Levin detailed this nonsense yesterday. The only parts of government that shut down are those visible parts that will inconvenience the public for the purpose of political theater. National Parks, the Smithsonian, passport processing….and it’s not like the government workers become destitute and can’t pay their mortgages. The furloughed employees receive back pay, so they typically receive a paid vacation. Virtually every recent administration, except the spineless GW, has suffered through a “shutdown” when the opposing party attempted to muscle through Congress their own agenda. Trump holds the most recent record of 35 days in his previous administration, but the apocalyptic shutdown usually lasts only a few days. And has the sky fallen? Has the country ceased to function? Of course not. All this theater for what? So the democrats can spend more taxpayer dollars on a progressive wishlist that includes healthcare for illegal aliens, Obamacare subsidies, an extension of Covid relief funding, and free Medicaid for able-bodied men in their 20s to remain unemployed so they can smoke weed and play video games on the couch. Shumer will rant and rave to support the measures after the far left of his party threatened to primary him with their socialist darling AOC, but the Dems have chosen a revealing hill to die on.

Tylenol Debacle

Oh Mr. President.I don’t like it when the President becomes the frontman for disseminating medical information. The Dr. Trump schtick didn’t play well during the COVID pandemic and is certainly not well received with the latest Tylenol-autism controversy. Cue the hysteria from the left. One would have thought he had learned his lesson the first time when he chose to be the authority on a medical issue. Not a good look for the administration. And remember how that worked out last time: people double-masked and wearing oven mitts when driving in cars. Alone. And the response has been predictable in this age of TDS, where anything Trump says is met with vehement opposition. Liberal pregnant persons, as a nod to their chosen vernacular, may now choose to gobble down Acetaminophen tablets like M&Ms just out of spite.  But there has to be a committee with expertise that engaged in some degree of medical research and a review of the literature that came to these conclusions associating the use of acetaminophen with autism when taken during pregnancy. Assign one of those medical nerds to take the heat and present the data logically, concisely, and coherently. And please, not Bobby. He is far too controversial.  And listening to him speak makes my throat sore.  It should have gone something like this:  “After an extensive review of the literature, our panel of experts concluded that acetaminophen should be used with caution during pregnancy, and at the minimal effective dose, due to a possible association with the development of autism in children exposed in utero. Research is ongoing.” Period. But no. In typical Trump grandiose fashion, we received the message that Tylenol is bad. It’s bad. Don’t take it! But a review of the most common literature citations reveals studies that show an association between higher concentrations of acetaminophen in umbilical cord samples and the development of autism. Some studies conclude that there is no association between Acetominohen and autism. However, as in all retrospective studies, there are too many variables. For example, do you recall how much Acetaminophen you took during pregnancy?  And how much did you take?  And what else were you taking? And why were you taking it?  Do you have any additional pre-existing conditions? Did you drink alcohol during your pregnancy? How much? Did you take any other drugs? Smoke? Smoke weed?  Were you exposed to environmental or chemical contaminants?  Are you obese? Did you have complications during pregnancy? How long were you in labor? Was there fetal distress? Was the delivery by C-section? We could go on, but we’d be here all day. But the point is that the issue is complex with an infinite number of variables. Even the defense of acetaminophen from the medical community has been weak, suggesting that fever and illness best treated with acetaminophen may actually be the causative factor in developing autism, not the medication. But that fails to explain the increasing occurrence of autism in first-world nations with easy access to acetaminophen, when it appears that it occurs to a lesser extent in cultures with lower exposure. Historically, one would suspect that those same illnesses and fevers would have occurred with similar frequency, if not in greater numbers, hundreds of years ago, before the advent of acetaminophen as a therapeutic treatment. And yet autism was not as prevalent. However, perhaps the diagnostic criteria have changed such that the spectrum has widened, capturing a greater number of mild cases in the net, thus giving the appearance of increasing prevalence. Again, it is a complex topic that warrants further research. But for the time being, you and your physician have to weigh the risk versus benefit ratio of using acetaminophen during pregnancy. At the very least, add it to the list of things you should try to avoid unless absolutely necessary. Why take the chance, regardless of which political party issues the warning

 

Again

The left’s hypocrisy is truly astonishing. A piece appeared in the New York magazine claiming that Trump and his cast of MAGA warriors have destroyed comedy by attacking free speech. It of course supplies an additional laundry list of all of the left’s grievances against this administration, charging Trump with “destabilizing the world economy,” deporting citizens, “suppression of LGBTQ and women’s rights,” the “rise of authoritarianism” and the “collapse of the federal government,” all leading to comedians being able to resurrect using the R-word to criticize their peers who voted for him. Yes, that word is “retard.” Wow. A whole article inspired by an HBO special based on a comment about the fictional suppression of free speech so that comedians can apply a slur to Trump voters. Pickings must be slim for clickbait. None of these journalistic geniuses recalls the demise of comedy in the woke era that preceded Trump’s re-election. Comedians lamented that mining for material that poked fun at race, homosexuality, trans-genderism, ethnicity, or even overweight people resulted in accusations of racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and body shaming. 

Stereotyping has long been the mainstay of comedy. Not anymore. How many comedians have had to roll back comments deemed offensive to some minority group lest they be cancelled? Remember when a diminutive black comedian was criticized for hosting a children’s birthday party with a Cowboys and Indians theme?  Alas, the only group remaining that can be bashed with impunity seems to be white heterosexual males. And if it weren’t for Donald Trump, most late-night talk show hosts wouldn’t have any material. Does anyone remember Frank Sinatra, widely credited with supporting equal accommodations for his Black musicians when on tour, mercilessly making what would now be considered racist jokes at Sammy Davis Junior’s expense onstage?  And Sammy giving it right back to the man who helped make his career. And does anyone recall Don Rickles? He would never have survived in this hypersensitive age of partisan division. In the words of Andrew Breitbart: “The left thrives on division and victimhood.” And the New York magazine is just offering us more of the same. 

Defaming Charlie

Breitbart had a caller this morning who launched into a rant that Charlie Kirk was a bigot, a racist, and despite being asked multiple times to explain what Charlie had ever said to make him come to that conclusion, he refused and just continued to parrot the Democrat talking points. Slater, the host, finally had enough and hung up on him, declaring there was no better poster child for the left: someone not willing to engage in thoughtful discussion but wanting only his views to be heard without justification for them. Slater’s guest said he’s tired of it and refuses to engage with the left. He said that we have to adopt their tactics of cancellation, boycott, and doxing. No more trying to appease a group of people who have shown time and again that they promote violence against us, that fund organizations that burn our cities and destroy property and take what isn’t theirs. He has a point.

Charlie Kirk

I made the mistake of going on HuffPo to see the left’s comments on the Kirk assassination. Big mistake. About 80% of the comments were from lefties who accused Kirk of being a “provocateur,” if not outright calling him a misogynistic, racist, homophobic hate monger. And of course, all of them referencing Jan 6 as being the start of political violence. Totally ignorant of the fact that the only person to die on that day was an unarmed woman. No mention of the BLM riots, of course. All deflection and finger-pointing with a smattering of gun ban talk. Too many are basically saying he deserved it because he supported the Second Amendment. The left is composed of some truly horrible people. This is not my America.

The Black Mystique

A Black caller from Milwaukee called in to “Charlemagne tha God’s” talk show and praised Trump coming into urban areas to clean up crime, stating that he was a productive member of society, working, paying a mortgage and putting his kids through school, but was sick of having his life disrupted by YNs (Black speak for young, the N word) with no future, causing mayhem. He was attacked by the Black hosts who claimed that the Black community had offered solutions but had been rejected by the government…..implying, of course, “white government”. The solutions?  Gun control, and more social programs for mental health, and the channeling of those Black offenders into vocations. What a swerve! Black, Democrat run cities controlling their cities’ destiny and that of their Black inhabitants, yet have failed to do so. And when Trump suggests a radical plan to control the violence, they double down on their failed policies. It is interesting that the caller also rejected gun control, stating that he needs to protect his family and gun control would only prevent him from doing that.  And this in the wake of a most recent 14-time offender, released onto the streets, stabs a woman to death with no provocation on a commuter train in Charlotte, North Carolina. The criminal statistics generated by the Black community as a whole are abysmal,  negating the contribution of those who are a credit to their race and country, the likes of George Schuyler, Thomas Sowell, and Elridge Cleaver. Do they heed their words of wisdom for guidance? No, they do not; they choose the diatribes of Al Sharpton,  Alexandria Corteze. and Jasmine Crockett.

Shame On You Harvard

Did you happen to catch the Atlantic article that revealed the level of grade inflation at Harvard? In 2001, 33% of students received an A in classes. By 2021, that figure had reached 80%. The Dean’s response was that professors have spent more time addressing the emotional needs of students, particularly those with disabilities. Huh? Meritocracy wanes in Cambridge, MA.

Not To Be Cruel

I think after yet another deranged transgender specimen succumbed to homicidal and then ultimately suicidal impulses, we can conclude that there exists a significant level of mental illness in this subset of the unhinged. We are about to descend into the cacophony of gun control proposals from the democrats, everything from assault weapon bans, handgun bans, to magazine bans. This particular offender gave them the entire menu, bringing a rifle, a pistol, and a shotgun to the massacre. If only he had brought a BB gun and a slingshot, the progressives could have left us defending ourselves with rocks. But once again, the manifesto left by this boy turned girl, then regretfully wanting to be a boy again, paints a picture of serious mental illness. And yet not one of his umpteen siblings nor his parents, let alone the myriad of so-called healthcare professionals and psychologists required to wade through the transitioning process, had an inkling?  Aside from the family members likely in denial, the medical community had been an enormous disappointment in exposing their liberal leaning undergarments by embracing the nonsense that has been disingenuously labeled “gender affirming care.”  If you were actually to affirm the gender of these folks, you may want to use the blueprint of DNA as the guidelines. Sorry Robin, but your DNA and the original equipment in your trousers tend to suggest that you’re male.. Wear a dress, speak in falsetto, and by all means, when you’re of age, feel free to find some morally corrupt physician willing to cut off healthy body parts… but you’re still a . phenotype, genotype…..lipstick on a pig. And the European literature, folks who have been doing this a lot longer than we have, is there to back it up. “Gender affirming care” does not, in fact, reduce the prevalence of mental illness and suicide in this population. It is not “life-saving care,” so just knock it off, lefties. But it is most likely that this perpetrator and his peers were suffering from depression, anxiety, or some mental illness that required medication. The antidepressant class of meds, usually SSRIs, are associated with suicidal and violent delusions, so much so that it is actually included on their warning labels. So the medical community, which has embraced this therapy, is actually prescribing medications likely to induce violent tendencies in a class of patients who already have a mental illness?  Genius. So, rather than banning guns for the entire population, how about we flag the records of people taking medications that may cause them to engage in violence?  “Oh, but HIPAA and patient confidentiality,” screams the left, the same people who continually attempt to make public the records of law-abiding gun owners. And with an estimated 10% of the population taking medication for depression, that’s a large segment of the public. So what. If the left wants to ban firearms, here’s your chance to eliminate 10%. Radical?  Maybe. Will the NRA holler? Probably. Will patients refuse to be prescribed SSRIs? Maybe that will spur the medical community to seek less deleterious alternatives. And besides, what percentage of the depressed population owns firearms?  More research is needed into this option rather than the simplistic “solution” of banning all 400 million firearms currently in the hands of the citizenry. Especially when those seeking to make policy are like the grandstanding mayor of Minneapolis, who opined that “clips” in conjunction with magazines and guns that can “pierce armor” are not your father’s hunting rifles and should be banned. Before speaking in public, it would be best not to sound like an ill-informed idiot. But I digress. Medical community:  it is time to step up and review the science and statistics and make decisions based on medicine, not politics. Depression and anxiety have become all too common in this age of social media in America. It’s time we treated the disease and not the symptoms. Keeping firearms out of the hands of the mentally ill, especially those taking medications with documented side effects of delusional thoughts of suicide and violence, might be a good place to start. 

Prompting An Exodus

And you wonder why our taxes are so high?  Did you see the article in the WSJ on firefighter pensions in NYC?  An average annual pension of $176K after 20 years on the job, with one quarter of retirees receiving over $200K. 60% of retired firefighters receive a disability pension, able to retire at 75% of their salary. Adding to that painful government boondoggle is that they don’t have to pay state and city taxes on the benefit and receive free healthcare. Dangerous work, yes, but that sort of expenditure would seem to be, not only ripe for fraud and corruption, but wholly unsustainable, particularly when  the solution proposed by Mamdani and the socialists on the left is to increase taxes on “richer and whiter neighborhoods.” With polling in NYC’s mayoral race showing Mamdani enjoying a 44% lead, perhaps now is the time for the rich and the white to flee to more hospitable climates.

And There It Is

A full embrace of socialism in response to the conservative movement.  It’s remarkable. Do the democrats suspect that they have finally reached the tipping point where enough academicians, government workers, spoon-fed students, virtue signalers, immigrants, and those on the dole account for a large enough percentage of the electorate to make a move and show their true colors? Surely Rhode Island is there already, Massachusetts not far behind, and heavily populated urban enclaves like New York, LA, and Chicago dominate state races, skewing the results to the left. Not enough for national politics, mind you, but the socialists are surely making inroads in cities, the left coast, and the northeast. Hopefully, they will fail in those leftist strongholds so miserably that this socialist bloom will die on the vine. But look at the miserable crime and urban blight the voters are willing to tolerate in exchange for empty promises, as they continue to vote the same democrats back into office. Not a very encouraging prospect.

I Am Bemused

With a great deal of hilarity and equal parts disgust, I watch the clamor arising over Trump attempting to restore law and order in Washington, DC.  Seriously?  We now have evidence that senior police officials have been cooking the books to alter statistics to make it appear that crime rates are falling. Independent statistics show that DC has a crime rate up to 5 times higher than places like Islamabad and nearly 10 times higher than Western cities in decline like London and Paris. Our cities are a national disgrace. Sure, the tourist traps are well scrubbed, Boston’s Quincy Market, Baltimore’s waterfront, and New York’s South Street Seaport, for example, but to get there, you have to drive through urban blight: graffiti, crumbling infrastructure, trash-strewn thoroughfares, and homeless encampments. That teenager in the lawn chair on the street corner with a cellphone, a paid lookout for the gang selling drugs, junkies in a stupor in city parks, itinerant youth congregating to harass shopkeepers and citizens going about their day. And not a cop in sight. We are devolving into a dystopian urban scene from Blade Runner. And then we hear the district attorney from DC claim that we “can’t arrest our way out of crime.” His solution?  More resources for our youth. Translation: more cash. Of course. The democrat solution for everything. The DC police actually issued a laundry list of dos and don’ts to prevent carjacking, in addition to distributing Apple Air Tags to track your stolen vehicle. Among them, keep your windows closed, keep your car locked, drive in the center lane, never drive alone, and always leave a car length between you and the car in front when stopped to provide an escape route. You have to be kidding me. A former surgery resident who served his training in Newark, NJ, told me those instructions, minus the air tags, were part of his job briefing 30 years ago, along with keeping your sunroof closed and never put valuables on the passenger seat in view and after a sham fender bender, never, ever get out if your vehicle. Nice to know that 30 years of Democrat rule in our cities has yielded no improvement. But taking a look at recidivism tells us a different story. As reported by Mike Slater on Breitbart, 40 percent of Crime in Atlanta is perpetrated by 1000 repeat offenders. Eighty percent of incarcerated criminals are repeat offenders. So in response to the DA: yes, we can arrest our way out of crime, you idiot. And we all know what the problem is, you just can’t say it in polite society. Urban youth and a deteriorating public education system, coupled with single-parent households and an ever-increasing disregard for law enforcement, with government rewards for sloth and underachievers, have given us a generation of inner city youth intent on lawlessness. And apparently, the left looks at these folks as their voting base and intends to tolerate the disorder and throw more money at it. Enough. We tried it your way, and it doesn’t work. Witness the vacant mall space that everyone attributes to Walmart and the internet. Is the decline in foot traffic really the result of internet shopping or safety concerns? Livingston Mall in New Jersey was once a thriving shopping center until the geniuses decided providing bus service from inner city Newark to the mall was a good idea. Access for all, including a segment of the population without the socioeconomic means to support the mall’s tenants. Brilliant. Unsavory individuals began using the mall as a social center without intending to buy anything. Assaults became commonplace, and carjacking soared as inner city youth simply took the bus to the mall and drove home in the vehicle of their choice, found stripped and on blocks days later in Newark’s less affluent neighborhoods. The mall suffered a premature demise. Providence, RI, installed an upscale mall downtown with big-name flagship stores. A dispute arose over a fancy hotel, whose lobby provided access to the mall from the city side, when they policed their lobby, not allowing inner city youth to congregate, use the access to the mall, and scare off hotel guests. The city won the argument to allow unfettered access, the hotel saw booking decline, then sold out to a lesser quality chain, and the mall, whose crime rate soared when invaded by inner city thugs, saw its foot traffic crater, the flagship stores left, and the mall deteriorated in quality and return on investment. Well done, Providence. In Syracuse, NY, the expanding Destiny Mall has, for years, hidden an increasing crime problem. Once again, inner city miscreants used the mall as a hangout, and violence was on the rise. Carjackings increased, theft was accepted as the cost of doing business, assaults in the parking garage and bathrooms became commonplace, and shootings in the food court and fights on the mall concourse made local news as the bored inner city youth resolved their petty disputes with violence. Store employees recounted horrific tales of being told not to confront shoplifters, and to tolerate returns for cash on merchandise that had been stolen with damage from removing anti-theft tags and, in some cases, urine stains from the common practice of peeing on the sensors to disable them. Yuck. And you, the law-abiding consumer, pay for that theft with increased prices to compensate for the loss. Flagship stores left, and mall traffic decreased as it became well known that it was not a place to be after dark. Only when the wife of Syracuse University basketball coach Jim Boeheim was robbed at gunpoint by a teenager did the mall’s problems make the nightly news. 

Why must we tolerate this mayhem in democrat controlled cities?  Do we really want our cities to resemble third-world hellholes, degenerating into breeding grounds for crime and sinkholes for an ever-expanding welfare state?  Of course not. And we should not. Punish the small minority of offenders with jail time. Restore our inner city parks and schools to safe zones for learning and community gatherings, and let’s take pride in our cities once again as centers for culture, entertainment, and the arts. And to do that we have to rethink the path that Democrat rule has put us on and that’s going to require those that live in the inner city to reprogram and help themselves take their cities back. And that may require Trump’s help. Enough already, we don’t have to live like this. 

The Constitution Must Prevail

WSJ: “This week [Trump] called for the Commerce Department to start working on a census that excludes immigrants who are in the country illegally, a move that would face court challenges.” What an obvious and patently biased statement by reporter Aaron Zitner, suggesting that it is somehow illegal. Tell me something I don’t know already. Of course, it will face court challenges because everything Trump does provokes a response by some socialist district judge in some blue-state enclave. I’m sure Judge Boasberg is drawing up the papers now. And it’s somewhat disingenuous to say illegal immigrants would be “excluded.”  They will be counted because we want to know how many are here. The census is not a checklist for deportation proceedings, and the information is not passed on to ICE so they can round them up. But we should know how many people are in the country, regardless of their citizenship status, don’t you think?  And remember the whole rationale behind a recount: the last one was flawed. Period. Congressional seats and federal money are doled out based on the population of citizens.  It has been estimated that at least 14 states have miscounted due to the inclusion of illegal immigrants in that tally. These are not US citizens and therefore do not have the right to vote. Thus, they are not eligible to be represented by a congressional seat, nor should they receive federal handouts of taxpayer money. It's not an opinion; it’s that pesky constitution again.

And regarding all the noise that Trump is not allowed to conduct a census because the entirely trustworthy and transparent Biden Administration already did. Well, c’mon, man.  The constitution states that a census should be performed WITHIN ten years. Not every ten years, not after ten years, but within. Look it up. I’m sure those 14 states, 13 blue incidentally, are perfectly content with the. Census results as they wallow in federal cash and revel in sending more democrats to Congress. But they are gaming the system again. And how do we know that the census was miscounted?  They admitted to it!

Diabolical Supterfuge

Unfortunately, we in the northeast are barraged with Democrat subterfuge. And, Massachusetts is an absolute disgrace. Nearly 40 percent voted for Trump, with precisely ZERO Republican congressional districts being represented. Ironic Massachusetts, the birthplace of the revolution, is now the poster child for taxation without representation. What’s really disturbing is the current census and gerrymandering hoopla. The left has been gerrymandering for decades to their advantage, and now it appears that they have also skewed the census results by overcounting population by adding illegal immigrants into the count, giving them more seats in Congress and more federal payouts. It’s diabolical. Now that they’ve been exposed in the Texas Republican redistricting debate, they’re squealing about democracy being threatened. They have no shame. 

Refute of Secretary Bessent

Interesting exchange between Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Gene Robinson on MSNBC, who was playing “gotcha” journalism, that the left is claiming to be a vindication that tariffs are bad for the American consumer and, by the transitive property of equality, Trump is therefore bad for America. There was wild celebration and gloating on the left. Headlines announced that Bessent was “trapped, “cornered”, and “brutally dismantled” by lightweight media sources such as rawstory.com, the New Republic, Yahoo Finance, and the most imbecilic of news sources: Facebook. What, nothing from The View? Please. Alas, the progressives are again showing a profound ignorance of exactly how capitalism works. But what do you expect from an entire class of partisans who have either never run a business or never worked in the private sector? Bessent attempted to explain the complexity of raising tariffs on Brazil, in this case, but was cut off when Robinson repeatedly asked who actually pays for those tariffs. Bessent’s answer was finally whittled down to conclude that the receiver of the goods ultimately pays the tariff, which may then be passed on to the consumer, AHA, screamed the left as Robinson spiked the football. So, are American businesses and consumers paying more for Brazilian goods? Not so fast, simpletons. 

Ribibson should have allowed Mr. Bessent, who, along with Messrs. Trump and Lutnick, knows much more about economics and markets than… virtually anyone on the left. If Americans are ultimately footing the bill for tariffs, then why is the world clamoring to cut deals with the Trump administration to balance trade? Hmmm, says the intelligent American, likely not a person with blue hair and a septum piercing. Or an associate editor of the Washington Post. Shall we begin? 

Let’s use coffee as an example. Scenario number one: If the price of Brazilian coffee increases significantly because the American business is forced to pass the tariff cost on to the consumer, the consumer may choose to buy Colombian coffee instead. The American business selling the coffee sees this trend as a reduction in sales and stops purchasing Brazilian coffee, thus avoiding paying the tariff altogether. The Brazilian coffee grower and, in turn, the Brazilian economy suffer as a result. The only downside is that the American consumer has to forego their Brazilian coffee fix. 

Scenario number two: The American business may decide unilaterally that Brazilian coffee is too expensive with the added tariffs and will seek alternative suppliers in countries with lesser tariffs or those offering their coffee at reduced prices. The Brazilian economy and the Brazilian coffee grower suffer as a result. The American consumer only suffers from being unable to procure Brazilian coffee from that particular American business. 

Scenario number three: The Brazilian coffee grower is faced with a choice: He can significantly reduce the price of his coffee to offset the tariff, essentially paying the tariff. This results in a reduction in Brazil's GDP and lost revenues for the Brazilian coffee grower. American businesses and American consumers are unaffected by this scenario. 

Scenario number four: Brazil cuts a deal with the Trump Administration to reduce tariffs on Brazilian products, including coffee, and American goods exported to Brazil. Everyone wins. 

So, in short, there may be pain in the short term if Americans can no longer afford certain products, such as Brazilian coffee, German cars, French wine, or Swiss chocolate. Of course, if spoiled Americans absolutely have to have those items, then yes, in scenarios one and two, they will have to pay more. However, as the largest economy in the world, market pressure will ultimately come to bear. Thus far, we have seen countries lining up to make trade deals with this administration, which represents the largest consumer market in the world. Yes, Gene you are apparently unaware, that would be us.

Hochul Hypocrisy

I still can’t understand the Democrats' outrage over Republicans' gerrymandering when they are avid students of the craft. And to have beaver-toothed and largely ineffective New York governor Kathy Hochul labelling it as “legal insurrection” and claiming “we are at war” while puffing out her chest, telling republicans to “bring it on” in a fit of bravado is just ridiculous. New York is the poster child for political gerrymandering, and even Politico, far from a conservative publication, ran the headline that she is “embracing” gerrymandering. So they just noticed? This is all political theater brought to you by the disingenuous actors on the left. Recall that Trump won 40% of the vote in California, Massachusetts, Illinois, and New York, yet the combined congressional seats slant 90 democrats to 27 republicans. For those on the left who are traditionally mathematically impaired, only 23% of the seats are Republican. How exactly do you think that happened?  Blue states have been up to these shenanigans for decades, and it is only now that Republicans are catching on, making the Democrats' outrage less about the actual practice and more about the annoyance that their tactics have been discovered and co-opted by the right. 

Hamas Rewarded

So Canada, France and the UK have decided to reward Hamas for their barbaric behavior by recognizing Palestinian statehood. Whats wrong with you prople?Hamas is winning the public relations war despite starving their own people, using civilians as shields, and starting the war in the first place by slaughtering Israeli civilians in an unprovoked, and particularly heinous attack on October 7, 2023. On that day Hamas took 251 hostages, some of whom are still suffering in captivity. Since then Israeli has suffered through a propaganda war with western media, universities and the left allied against them in a brazen display of anti-semitism. The New York Times and Politico were recently exposed for using images of Palestinian children with unrelated genetic diseases to support the claim that Israel is starving them. All this despite Israel airlifting one of the children with CF to Italy for medical treatment. Recall that as Gaza burns and the populace suffers, the impotent UN is allowing food to rot in the sun because they prefer Hamas protection to either the IDF or American supported security forces. Food warehouses for Hamas fighters remain well stocked while the civilians scramble for supplies and Hamas leadership lives in luxury in Qatar having used Gaza as their piggy bank for decades. And meanwhile the Arab world refuses to take in Palestinian refugees and, most recently,  Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Qatar have called on Hamas to disarm, release the remaining hostages and not to be involved in a post-war government. Perhaps they know something that Canada, France and the UK don’t. But alas stupidity  isn’t the likely cause. It’s more cowardice. Canada’s Muslim population is 5%, the second largest religious group behind Christianity. The UK is at 6% and France a whopping 13% of their population. With no intention of assimilation. The west has opened their doors to unfettered immigration, particularly from Muslim countries, and as their numbers grow, the governments fear unrest will follow unless they cave to public opinion of a growing segment of the populace. We are being invaded, and as our democracies are used against us, with Muslim politicians rising in major cities, we will be responsible for our own demise.

Beyond Ridiculous

This Sydney Sweeney controversy over her American Eagle genes/jeans advertising campaign is ridiculous. Claims that the ads are promoting eugenics and Nazi ideology, largely based on the fact that the spokesperson is an attractive, buxom, white, blue-eyed female is made even more preposterous when the source of the attacks is coming from not only extraordinarily unattractive progressive women, but the same lefties we have seen marching in support of abortion and Planned Parenthood. Recall that it is an organization actually created by Margaret Sanger, a renowned racist and practitioner of eugenics. Democrats, thy name is hypocrisy. Although, stupidity seems to be more appropriate in this case. 

The Unfunny Stephen Colbert

Stephen Colbert’s Late Show getting canceled is among the best news I’ve heard recently in a string of wins for conservative Americans. How he has survived along with his $15 million salary and a steadily declining viewership is beyond me. Pompous? Yes. Arrogant? Yes. Elitist? Yes. Funny?  Absolutely not. Next on the docket should be the equally abrasive and even less amusing Jimmy Kimmel. They should all follow James Corden into obscurity after the otherwise entertaining Brit discovered that yanks don’t want to listen to a pudgy little foreign troll bash our government night after night on late-night television. Whoever the network executive was who decided late night comedy should devolve into partisan political commentary by failed comedians that pander to the Hollywood elite and a detached, privileged segment of the viewing public should be fired along with rest of these late night hacks. Make Late Night Funny Again.