Monday, December 18, 2017

Chuck and Nancy wrong again....as usual

Ask Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Elizabeth Warren (D-Ma) or Bernie Sanders (I-Vt) what they think about the Trump administration's plan to reform our tax system and they will to a man/woman assert with absolute conviction and authority that it is merely a tax cut for the richest 1% of American fat cats, and that the middle class will suffer terrible.  Nancy Pelosi (D-Ca) in fact calls it 'Armageddon.'

Once Donald Trump signed the tax reform package laid on his desk on Dec 21, 2017, about twenty huge (or as The Donald would say, 'yuge') corporations announced bonuses, raises and employee benefits effective immediately.  These companies include Boeing, Comcast, Wells Fargo, 5/3rd Bank among others.  Behavior that was completely opposite the bogus claims of Chuck, Nancy, Pochahontas and Crazy Bernie.  They couldn't have been more wrong.

Their underlying assumption for thinking this way is that when Americans are allowed to keep more of their money, rather than give it to the government via confiscatory taxation, these greedy Americans will just sit on the money, and keep it in bags lining their hallways, much like Scrooge McDuck (see photo).  Rather than reinvesting into their businesses, they would simply do swan dives into the deep piles of money, and wallow around in the gobs of cash, making 'money angels' by waving their arms and feet in the piles of dough.

This is how Democrats view American capitalists; greedy pigs that simply want as much money as possible and to hell with everybody else, let them eat cake.  This is demonstrably not true.  Although there are a certain percentage of corporations that will use the additional funds that they don't send in to Uncle Sugar to buy back stock, or issue dividends to share holders, or yes, line the hallways of their mansions with bags of money like Scrooge McDuck.  There are some of those types out there, nobody can deny that.

But the majority of Americans who work hard will take this additional money they find in their pockets at the end of the tax year and use it to expand their businesses, hire people, buy plants and equipment.

The Scrooge McDucks of this country, while out there,  are a tiny minority of businesses, and not the majority as Chuck and Nancy claim.  The cut from 35% to 21% in the corporate rate will generate an enormous amount of economic activity, not just go into money bags lining the mansion hallways of the fat cats.

This is a primary difference between the conservative view of Americans and the pessimistic liberal view.  I prefer to think of my fellow capitalists as entrepreneurs, and not as Scrooge McDucks.

Tuesday, December 5, 2017

No more subsidizing liberalism with new tax reforms

I am quite tired of supposed rock-ribbed Republicans in high tax states (California, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts..et al) getting in front of any microphone they see and whining about the proposed elimination of the deduction of state and local taxes (SALT) from their federal returns.  Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Peter King (R-NY) are crying foul that the proposed reforms will negatively effect their citizens in these high tax states.


Well duh.  Congressmen Issa and King: fight for your constituents and convince them that lower state and local taxes will benefit them, rather than ignoring this federal welfare that sucks off of the rest of us outside of your districts.  Use this tax hike for the benefit of your state in the long run: lay this increase directly at the feet of those who created it in the first place: liberal local Democrats.  Run on this as a platform for change.  Elect Republicans to reverse these high tax conditions.  

Whining about getting rid of the SALT deductions so that your voters can continue to sponge off of their neighboring states is is not a conservative position.  This is not why Republicans are elected - to preserve the subsidization of liberalism.

Voters in these liberal states elect local and state officials who jack up taxes.  These scalawag politicians, however, insist to their constituents that these higher taxes will not affect them, owing to the ability to write them off on their 1040 form.  This is true.  The end result is that this practice is simply mooching off of the rest of the nation; exactly what all liberal politicians run on and are elected and re-elected on.

This is tax welfare, given to liberal state elected officials in return for their local votes.  Enough of this.  If your states vote to jack up state and local taxes, then live with it.  Suck it up.  You voted for it, and don't expect the rest of us to pay for it.

These 'conservative' politicians are assholes.  Start behaving like Republicans and not like jerks.


Saturday, November 11, 2017

Virginia results are not a referendum...

Anyone who has ever lived in northern Virginia is not surprised by the results of last Tuesday's election: a Democrat beat a Republican.  This should not be a shock to anybody.

I used to live in northern Virginia (3 years in Manassas, VA, in Prince William County).  This area is lousy with swamp dwellers.  Everybody in the counties surrounding Washington DC works for the government.  Well, just about everybody.  In my humble suburban housing development, there were about 50 single family homes.  Of those 50, maybe ten of those homes were supported by someone who worked in the private sector.  The other 40 were supported by government paychecks: federal administrators, lobbyists, various federal departments such as defense, HUD, SEC, etc.  I knew all of these people, and they were not all raging liberals, though many were.

These people were just what we now call 'deep state' or 'swamp' dwellers.  They watched administrations come and go, and remained employed by the U.S. government, regardless of their party affiliations.

They simply vote in their best interests.  And along comes Donald Trump, an outsider who vows to drain their beloved swamp.  Guess who they are NOT going to vote for?  You got it.  Anybody with any ties to The Donald, even though Ed Gillespie was more akin to them than to The Donald.  Didn't matter: he had a 'R' behind his name.  That was all the swamp dwellers needed to know.

The math here ain't hard, folks.  Northern Virginia is home to the swamp dwellers when they go home at night.  The counties surrounding DC such as Fairfax, Loudon, Prince William and Arlington all house the swamp people, the Deep Staters.

This was not a referendum on Donald Trump's agenda, as the mainstream media all insist was what happened.  This election was about these swamp people keeping their jobs.  Nothing more.  Most of the downstate folk are split between conservatives and liberals, and they could go either way.  But Northern Virginia will always vote their paychecks.

And The Donald has vowed to cut the fat, and that's what Northern Virginia is all about - getting fat off the federal government.  They don't want to be drained.

Nothing more to it than that.  I know, because I saw this with my own eyes.

Monday, November 6, 2017

Kudos to Donna Brazile, way to go out swinging

Donna Brazile's tell all book about the malfeasance and skulduggery within the Democrat National Committee and the Clinton Crime Syndicate is a refreshing change from the days gone by, where absolutely nobody  from the inside whispered so much as 'boo' about the Clintons and their 40-year crime spree.

The DNC, representative of so much that is wrong with politics, has so poisoned the political arena within the last few decades, it is not shocking to hear that they laundered money, lied, stole, cheated and probably murdered their way into power and once in, to keep it.  Not a shock at all.  

This has been the Clinton playbook since the 1980's in Arkansas.  And every page of that playbook is probably illegal and morally bankrupt.  It is high time that somebody said it.

Besides me, of course.

Donna can kiss any position within the Democrat Party off forever, that is certain.  But the way she went out is to be applauded, as she tells her protesting critics to 'go to hell.'  You tell 'em, girl!!

The Clintons and the DNC used Donna Brazile as a useful idiot, and then as a scapegoat when things crashed and burned in 2016.  It is not a surprise that she didn't like how they treated her, despite her efforts as a loyal foot soldier in their socialist army, and she chose this hill to die on.  Good choice, Donna.

She of course will remain a rock ribbed socialist to her dying day, but I must applaud her chops here.  To stand up to these bullies is to be lauded.  No, I will never agree with anything she believes in politically, but we need more political courage just like this,  not less.

Good for you, Donna Brazile.  Way to go down swinging.  

Sunday, October 29, 2017

The Clintons and Democrats are rotten because we give them a pass

Do you ever wonder what would happen to you if you did even 1/100th of the rotten stuff that the Clintons do?  Bill and Hillary Clinton have been getting away with murder for 40 years, and maybe even longer than that.

I won't go down the laundry list of felonies that this rogue couple has gotten away with (Bubba lying to Congress during the Lewinski scandal, Bubba selling ICBM technology to the Chinese, Hillary compromising our intelligence community and national security with her private unsecured server in her closet, Hillary selling 20% of our uranium reserves to the Russians...).  No, I won't go down that list as long as my arm.

And now Hillary's campaign was caught paying $6,000,000.00 to a concern with Kremlin ties to dig up dirt on The Donald (she says she knew nothing about it. Of course she was clueless, that is her standard dodge).

Why are neither of these criminals serving sentences in The Big House right now?  Anybody else would have been slammed in the hoosegow and the key would have been thrown away for even 1/10th of the crooked crap that these two have perpetrated.

Simple answer.  We, the American People, are loathe to punish somebody this high up for what might be considered political reasons.  We will simply not be seen by the rest of the world as a Banana Republic, where the winning side imprisons the losing side.

And the Clintons KNOW this.  And they USE this against the American people and engage in decades-long crime sprees the likes of which has never been seen in the world.  Likely neither of them will ever see the inside of a prison despite deserving such a fate one hundred times over.  The American people just don't have the stomach to indict these scalawags.

Just remember a little history, however: one of the main reasons that Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette lived the lives of luxury in the late 1700's in France amid their starving peasant subjects without a second thought of the optics of it all: they were the peasant's 'betters,' and accordingly deserved to flaunt their opulent ways.  

And we all know how that turned out.


Sunday, October 15, 2017

Hollywood not paying the price for their silence....

Much hated by liberals, former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski pointed out an interesting perspective on the Harvey Weinstein scandal, and Hollywood's sealed lips about it over decades and decades.
Lewandowski correctly notes that virtually everybody who was anybody in Hollywood knew about what a predatory criminal scumbag Harvey Weinstein was, for years and years, and yet nobody said a word about it to the police.  These exact same actions by the late Joe Paterno, coach of
Penn State football program, namely remaining silent for years after being informed of assistant coach Jerry Sandusky's predatory sexual crimes, was cause for massive punitive actions against his former pristine legacy.  Lewandowski wants to know why there is no such repercussions against these Hollywood types who also kept silent and allowed this criminal activity to flourish for decades.  That's a really good question.

After his death, a statue of Paterno was removed from the Penn State campus in 2012 and replaced by trees and landscaping, in an attempt to erase the taint of Joe's legacy.  The Penn State football team forfeited over 100 games over Joe's tenure, and Joe Paterno lived his final days in disgrace and shame, with investigations and possible indictments hanging over his head.

What about virtually every heavy hitter, poobah, 800 pound gorilla and Hollywood A-list star in Tinsel Town who were all fully aware and informed of what a despicable reprobate Harvey Weinstein was, and yet remained silent for decades?

How many young aspiring actresses and actors were torpedoed and black listed by Weinstein when they rebuffed his clumsy and overt unwanted sexual advances?  Tens, hundreds, maybe even THOUSANDS over his Hollywood reign of terror?  Nobody said boo, and the damage by Harvey Weinstein was allowed to continue, FOR  DECADES.

Why are these silent co-conspirators not indicted in this scandal?  Why are their careers and legacies not tainted and erased from the public square like Joe Paterno's was for his silence?

I would like an answer to that question posed by Corey Lewandowski.  It's a very good question.


Wednesday, October 11, 2017

Hollywood elites will continue their lectures to us

Yes, despite this little Harvey Weinstein setback to their elite liberal agenda, Hollywood celebrities will continue to lecture the rest of us Great Unwashed regarding how we live our lives, work, associate ourselves with others, and on and on.  

You would think that the credibility coming out of Hollywood would be complete garbage by now, with the shameful slimy behavior of one of their poobahs being swept under the rug for decades.  Everybody in Tinsel Town knew what a scumbag this guy was for years and years, and yet they charge President Trump with crimes against women, along with a general charge of a conservative 'war against women.'  This guy is no different than Bill Clinton, a powerful scumbag who used his position to impose himself upon less powerful women at will, with no accountability whatsoever to this very day.  How come Bill Clinton's name is not included in the discussion of the Harvey Weinstein scandal?  Both of them are peas in a pod.  

I am quite frankly tired of being lectured to about what I drive, what I eat, how I worship, and who I consider an enemy of the American way of life by these shameless liberals, and in particular the hypocritical elites in Hollywood.  

These same hypocrites lecture us about us clinging to our guns and yet they themselves are surrounded by security forces armed to the teeth.  They wag their fingers at us for our carbon footprints, and yet a small group of eight or ten A-list celebrities tagging along with Leonardo DiCaprio jet off to the Cannes Film Festival in his Boeing 737 flying party barge that sucks down about ten thousand gallons of jet fuel. They insist on all of us in fly over country (or as Adrienne would lovingly label us, 'dirt people') confine our children to pathetic and failing union dominated public schools, and yet they themselves educate their children in posh exclusive private schools.  Our Hollywood 'betters' tell us 'dirt people' that open borders are a good thing, and yet they dwell behind masonry walls so high and thick that they would give Ghenghis Khan pause before considering a siege.

Hypocrisy seeps out of every pore on their elite bodies, and yet for some reason they continue to garner support from a portion of our population.  Their credibility on how we all should allocate our scarce national resources has been almost nonexistent ever since the talkies emerged over silent films.

Why should anyone at any level listen to any of these guys from this point forward?

An  oozy weeping pox on all of these Hollywood hypocrites.

Tuesday, October 3, 2017

Puerto Rico was a mess before the hurricane...

Now, after being hammered by Hurricane Irma, it is now an even bigger mess.

Puerto Rico has been run by corrupt men ever since the days of the infamous pirate Blackbeard occasionally put down anchor off its shores, and the rampant corruption continues to this very day.  While the setting of this island could have been the stuff of great vacation getaways, its handlers for the last 500 years have siphoned off every nickel that ever washed ashore.

It is home to 3,000,000 slovenly people, and virtually none of them  have even a sliver of a work ethic.  They all have been on the public dole for generations, and have never even considered building their homes or businesses to withstand the subtropical extreme weather that slams these environs frequently over the last million years or more.

Puerto Rico was completely bankrupt prior to their hovels being blown down.  Now every Puerto Rican has their hand out, waiting for the U.S. government to swoop down in helicopters and luxury cruise ships and whisk them off to a Marriott property somewhere, where they will feast on shrimp scampi and caviar, scold the Marriott staff for not hustling a little faster in fulfilling their whims, and all the while the U.S. taxpayers are expected to bust all of our asses and rebuild their hovels to exactly the way they were prior to this natural occurrence.  And without they themselves pitching in one iota.

Nuts to that.  Puerto Ricans, all 3,000,000 of them should knuckle down, pick themselves up and soldier on.  Their island could probably support perhaps 100,000 hard working folk who can cater to the only industry worth rebuilding: the tourist industry.  I don't know what the other 2,900,000 of them will do, but they better figure it out themselves.

But no.  They won't lift a finger to help themselves.  They will whine, caterwaul and in general gnash their teeth and engage in great wailing.  

I say we turn a blind eye to these wastrels.  Let them stew in the mess they themselves are responsible for.  They chose to live in Hurricane alley, and when a hurricane eventually came along and did what hurricanes do, they are flabbergasted.

How about doing what everyone else does the world over; help yourselves.  

Friday, September 8, 2017

Life in Florida: expect lots of wind and water. Count on it.

Hurricanes and Florida go together like peanut butter and jelly, sumo wrestlers and all-you-can-eat buffets, Democrats and corruption.  The U. of Miami even calls their sports teams the Hurricanes.

If you choose to live in Florida, you can count on rebuilding your destroyed house at least once, if not more.  Count on it.  Either the hurricane force winds will flatten you, or the ensuing flood/storm surge will swamp  you.  Or both.  

And yet people living in 'America's Friendliest Home Town', 'The Villages,' all live in cheap double-wides, which can't even stand up to a 75 mph gust, much less stronger hurricane force winds.  What's up with these people?  

With the latest hurricane (Irma) predicted to tear through the middle of Florida, starting at Miami and heading north, the news media can hardly wait to film the carnage this latest maelstrom will bring.  These vultures will glom onto the many sob stories of poor schmucks losing everything, the tears rolling down their cheeks, clutching to their wedding photo album; the only thing they could save when the Cajun Navy comes by in their air boats to save them from drowning.  

I don't get it.  Live in Florida, and get hammered by a hurricane. It's like the sun coming up in the east and setting in the west.  It occurs so often, you can set your watch by these monster storms' arrivals. And yet these poor fools are shocked...SHOCKED!!!...that their lives have been devastated by Mother Nature.  

Recommendation to people who insist on living in Florida despite the well known hazards of constant hurricanes: don't live in double-wides. Build your home above the flood plain, probably 'stilts' are in order. Frame your stick-built homes using steel studs, not southern yellow pine studs.  Use masonry (bricks) for the siding, not vinyl.  Build your roofs with ceramic slate or metal, not flimsy asphalt shingles.  Don't plant big trees near your house that can get blown into your bedroom.  

In other words, use your brain.  Don't be an idiot who makes the 6 o'clock news, getting interviewed by Matt Gutman wearing virtually everything you now own: a wife-beater T-shirt, camo shorts and flip flops, with tears flowing down your face.

Duh.

Thursday, August 31, 2017

Pick your poison: where do you want to live?

Yes, Hurricane Harvey wreaked havoc on the Houston area, with terrible damage that will take years to rebuild.  

It happens.  Living in subtropical areas such as Florida and southern Texas as well as many nice areas along the Gulf coast has its appeal: nice, temperate weather for most of the year, with the winters just a bit chilly and the summers pretty hot.  Lots of people like this.  Me, too.  But living in subtropical environs, one should expect that extreme subtropical weather will be part of your living experience as well.

But nobody should expect that taxpayers should subsidize your choice of where to settle down.  When you buy a home in Oklahoma ('Tornado Alley'), you should expect a tornado from time to time, and accordingly you should buy appropriate insurance.

Or living  in the beautiful forested areas out West: it's real nice most of the year, but from time to time, lightening or careless campers set these forests on fire, and folks' homes go up in flames along with the trees.  Again, some home owners insurance goes a long way when the poop hits the fan occasionally.

When you choose the Great State of Alaska to put your roots down, you need to know that the place is frozen two thirds of the year and that your heating bills will take up a significant amount of your disposable income, in addition to snowmobiles and snow blowers just to get to the store or post office, etc. so that you have some semblance of freedom to move about.

Ditto living in the upper mid-west: it can get down to 30 below zero in northern Minnesota.  For weeks at a time in January and February.  Expect to sit tight until that kind of killer weather moves on, and don't expect government helicopters to swoop in and take you to the grocery store when you run out of Oreo cookies. 

But please don't expect to live in these areas on other people's dimes, and when the weather dumps on you horribly, you put your hand out to the government and expect to be made whole at the taxpayer's expense.

Pick your poison.  Live where you want to live.  This is America, and you can go wherever you want.  Just don't expect the rest of us to pay for your choices.  

It may sound hard hearted, but this is the United States of America, Land of the Free and Home of the Brave: take care of yourselves.  

Thursday, August 24, 2017

With Republican governors like Bruce Rauner, who needs Democrats?

It is widely believed that Gov. Bruce Rauner (R-IL) plans on signing into law SB31 next Monday.  This is a bill that would essentially make the entire state of Illinois a sanctuary state.  That is to say, it would forbid any state or local employee or any organization that receives money from the state to assist the federal government in detaining illegal aliens.

This would make every public building in the entire state sanctuary's for illegals: public libraries, DMV offices, state government buildings, college campuses, public school grounds, on and on - the entire state would become a sanctuary for illegals.

Currently, Illinois spends approximately $4.5 Billion dollars annually supporting illegals and their progeny.  Also note that Illinois is dead, flat broke; the Land of Lincoln is arguably in worse financial condition than California, and that is saying something.

Now we are going to see a wave of illegals hitting the welfare rolls, depleting the state coffers even more than they already are.  

With Republican governors like this, who needs Democrats?


Friday, August 4, 2017

'Deep State' moles fighting for their lives

There should be no doubt now that the so-called 'Deep State' exists, and much like cockroaches when exposed to the light of day these Deep State insects are scurrying for cover lest they get stepped on and squashed.

These Deep Staters are simply liberal bureaucrats leftover from former administrations to include the Obama, Bush and Clinton days.  They are all thoroughly entrenched within the government bureaucracies, and are completely addicted to gobbling down the excessive bloat, waste, fraud and abuse of an inefficient system that has been awash in cash for decades and decades.

Also known as 'The Swamp,' which Donald Trump swore he would drain, these guys and gals now understand that the President is determined to change things in Washington, and if he is successful (which he usually is in about everything he has ever gotten involved in), their days laying sideways in the government trough are numbered.

Accordingly, they are pulling out all the stops in their efforts to thwart the Trump agenda, and will stop at nothing to make The Donald look bad, even at the risk of doing damage to our national security with these recent leaks of conversations between the President and the leaders of Mexico and Australia.

We should expect this type of sabotage to continue, until these cockroach Deep Staters are uncovered and terminated.  After all, when a swamp is drained, you are always going to run into disgruntled alligators and snapping turtles.  They won't go quietly into that good night, no siree Bob.  They will go kicking and screaming.

Fine.  As long as they go.

Thursday, April 20, 2017

Why Bill O'Reilly is gone

Bill O'Reilly had a good run.  But it was bound to end, and end it did.  I would have preferred that he had gone out under indictment, or otherwise frog marched in front of the cameras with his sport jacket over his head, but at least he's gone.

Bill is not unlike others of his mold: basically a big bully who has gotten everything to go his way for his entire life.  His downfall was a cumulative effect of how he lived his life:

Ivy League educated.  How he got into Harvard is anybody's guess, based on his background.  He grew up in a working class neighborhood in Leavitttown, NY, with a working class father scratching out a living.  But once he graduated from Harvard, he had that arrogance that all the Ivy League schools imbue in their graduates: they are our betters, they know everything and should be given whatever they want in life.  These Ivy Leaguers are for the most part insufferable.  And Bill O'Reilly is no exception. I hate Ivy League graduates.

He is a good looking guy.  It's no secret that good looking people have a leg up in society.  Notice that there are no bald, fat, short people reporting the evening news.  No, that just will never happen.  As he got older, he got uglier (don't we all), but in his youth he was a dashing figure, and he moved to the front of the line at all times, whatever line he wanted to cut.  I hate good looking people.

He is 6'4" tall.  Tall people always seem to think that because they can look over the crowd without a step stool, they know everything.  It starts in grade school or junior high: once these guys get to be that big, they assume the 'bull of the woods' mentality: don't you know I'm bigger than you?  And because I'm bigger than you, I am right and you are wrong.  True, not every tall guy is like this, but most are, or at least most tall guys that are 6'4" or taller that I've ever known are. All these tall guys were born on third base and think they hit a triple.  I hate tall guys.

And finally, he got wildly rich and famous.  That was the final nail in the coffin for Ivy League educated, good looking tall guys.  They think their poop doesn't stink.   I hate wildly rich and famous guys.

Bill O'Reilly had all of these things 'going for him,' or so he thought.  He would yell down his guests when they started getting the best of him, such as Barney Frank and Geraldo Rivera.  Screaming matches is how these guys get their way.  And with women, they just assume since they are Ivy League educated, good looking and tall, the girls will just swoon as they work their magic.

In Bill's case, a few of these gals he ran into didn't buy into all of his charms, and probably told him to go pound sand.  Big, Ivy League educated handsome tall guys don't put up with that, and his handlers had to pay up some significant monetary settlements to smooth over his misdeeds.

I will not miss Bill O'Reilly.  He was a big, nasty bully, and finally was held to account.  

Tuesday, April 18, 2017

Lou Dobbs is right: Ryan is the most incompetent Speaker ever

Why Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wi) still has a job is beyond me.  This is the guy who personally scuttled the efforts of the Trump administration to repeal Obamacare.

Lou Dobbs, financial analyst on Fox Business channel, ever the Ryan detractor, has nothing good to say about Ryan.  Lou can point to absolutely nothing that Paul Ryan has ever accomplished, other than to get elected in backwater Wisconsin several times, tapped for Veep by Mitt Romney in his failed presidential run in 2012, and reluctantly accepted the Speaker's gavel (which he now refuses to give up).

Paul Ryan has legislatively opposed every initiative that Donald Trump has proposed, and is actively encouraging the Freedom Caucus, those renegade Republicans in the House who will vote down any bill that is not perfect.  

And of course, no bill is ever perfect, so we can count on the Freedom Caucus to scuttle every effort President Trump advances. With Ryan in the Speaker's chair, Trump's presidency will struggle to get anything done.  Ryan is in his heart of hearts a Never-Trumper who continues the fight to bring Donald Trump down.

This guy has got to go.

Wednesday, March 29, 2017

They think we are all idiots

There's gold in them thar hills.  All you gotta do is just dig it out.  Stupidity is big business, with big money to be had from those dim bulbs out there who believe anything they see on TV.

"Marie Osmond lost 50 pounds of stubborn belly fat on Nutri-System.  You can, too!"  Everybody knows that if you say 'stubborn belly fat' enough times, the money will flow into the advertiser coffers.  And American bellies will still be layered with that stubborn belly fat.  Lots of it.

"Serve-Pro; it's like it never even happened."  A flood wipes out everything you own, and these guys will swoop in and make your life whole again.  The ads said so.  Right.  They will promise to fix every damn thing, just sign here.  And once your check clears, the foot dragging starts.  It'll take between now and Kingdom Come for these scalawags to get your life back together, and it will never be exactly to your liking.

"Nothing ever sticks to MY pan, ever."  Chef Daniel Green swears that you can buy his Gotham Steel frying pan and throw away all of your cleaning pads, scouring powder and such, just wipe his miracle pan clean with a paper towel.  I actually bought into this one myself, stupid me.  The pan loses its anti-stick properties after one or two uses.  

If you believe these guys, the only thing you will be guaranteed to lose is not your stubborn belly fat.  It's your wallet that's going to get skinny, and you will get virtually nothing in return.

Take those ads for reverse mortgages from AAG, featuring smooth talking, handsome Tom Selleck shilling these loans.  Stability in retirement is what they are selling.  Your home's equity turned into tax free cash, it's like money for nothing and your chicks for free.  "It's just another way for the bank to take your house," and Tom poo-poohs this notion.  Americans will believe Tom, he's too damn tall and handsome to lie.

Is Tom lying?  Well, technically, probably not.  He's reading a script.  The reverse mortgage people are counting on the dumb American public to trust these celebrities (and we do), and then watch the money flow in.  In fact, it is just another way for the bank to take your house.  Tom may not be lying technically, but what he is saying is not what you are signing up for.

We used to call these loans 'second mortgages,' and they are all the same: banks loan money to home owners and use the equity in the home as collateral.  Once you sign those papers, the bank just took your house.  "You still own your home," Tom croons.  Well, not really.  The bank has a lien on your house, just like any other instrument such as a home equity line of credit (HELOC), a home equity loan, or some banks even stick to the antiquated term 'second mortgage.'  

The only difference in these new fangled reverse mortgages from the old fashioned mortgages is how the loan is repaid.  Rather than chip away at the interest and principal each month with a payment, these things are back loaded and are paid in full once the home 'owner' vacates the house: assuming you don't default on the banks terms for maintaining their interests on 'their' property such as failing to fix the leaking roof, pay your annual property taxes or fail to take out home owner's insurance (which would be grounds for immediate eviction of you and your loved ones from the bank's house).

In the good ol' days, home owners would pay off their 30 year mortgage, burn the mortgage paper at the pay off date, and live happily ever after in their free and clear house.  And after the Good Lord calls these folks home, the off spring inherit the homestead.

Those days are long gone.  The bank now owns the home, until its interests are paid in full after the house is vacated.  Which is usually a hefty sum, often equalling the fair market value of the house (which the bank will arbitrarily and unilaterally determine).

These ads, all of them, promise the world to a gullible viewing public.  Word of advice: don't believe a word, not a syllable of what these shysters are hawking.  It's all crap, and the only winner in any transaction with these guys is them.  

Not you.


Thursday, March 23, 2017

A mansion on a sandy beach for everyone

Oh, to live in the Land of Plenty.  Where the streets are paved with gold, and everybody is nice all the time, and there is no evil, pain, suffering or want.  In this Land of Plenty, there is never a tear drop in any eye, and everybody has a mansion on a sandy beach.

Life is good in this Land of Plenty.

Of course, this Land of Plenty does not exist, has never existed at any time anywhere in the history of history.  And this Land of Plenty will never exist.  It is but the stuff of political promises.

We are now watching the legislative battles on Capitol Hill today, as the Democrats vow to keep Obamacare intact, the GOP Freedom Caucus vowing to scuttle the current Obamacare-Lite bill (The American Healthcare Act) because it is nothing more than the same thing we have now, only tweaked around the edges.  And of course, we have President Trump twisting arms to get his 216 votes needed to pass this latest pack of socialism wrapped in the American flag.

Donald Trump and Speaker Paul Ryan have promised to repeal the massively socialist Obamacare program in favor of a kinder, gentler massive socialist program.  Speaker Ryan swears nobody will be left in the lurch, and nobody will have their current health care package go into a lapse of coverage.  

Everybody that voted for the GOP these last three out of four elections (2010, 2014 and 2016) wanted Obamacare gone, but wanted to retain the provisions of the act that covered pre-existing conditions and kids to remain on their parent's insurance until age 26.  Other than that, Obamacare stinks.  Right?

The pre-existing condition clause is nothing more than a naked transfer of trillions of dollars to those who need horrifically expensive treatment to survive.  There is just not enough money in the world to grant everybody a heart transplant or a kidney transplant that needs one, and only charge them a few dollars in co-payment.  These operations are hundreds of thousands of dollars.  

What the American voter and all politicians are saying is that these God awfully expensive medical procedures are a right, and not a priveledge (Ted Kennedy's words, they roll of the tongue, don't they?).  If money is no object, which clearly everyone agrees is the case when it comes to health care, why not grant every American the right to fly their own personal Lear jet?

And grant everybody in the U.S. a mansion on a sunny, sandy beach?  As a right?  We're talking about the same sentiment.  We just don't have the money to grant everybody anything their heart desires because some folks can afford it and some folks can't.  

That kind of talk is just mean spirited, just ask Chuck Schumer (D-NY) or Bernie Sanders (Communist - USSR).

This is not a mean spirited country, right?  Free shit for everybody!  As much as the Freedom Caucus is gumming up the latest works regarding passage of this latest free shit bill, they at least understand that there is no such thing as a free lunch.

Or a free mansion on the beach.

Wednesday, March 8, 2017

What happened to all of this 'repeal and replace' stuff?




The announcements are in.  The conservative majority in the House and the Republican president who ran and were elected on promises of 'repeal and replace Obamacare' are now starting to weasel out of their promises.

This newly announced "American Health Care Act" still has many of the prohibitively expensive taxes and mandates that Obamacare had:

  • you still have to have insurance, but now if you don't have it rather than pay Uncle Sam, you pay the hated insurance companies.
  • The 'Cadillac' plan tax is still there, although deferred until 2025.
  • "Kids" still stay on their parent's policy until age 26.
  • Pre-existing conditions cannot disqualify anyone from obtaining insurance.
In other simpler terms, it has now accurately been called "Obamacare-Lite" or "Obamacare 2.0".  And for good reason: all of these provisions are unsustainable, and will never control costs.  The pre-existing conditions clause alone will bankrupt the system sooner or later, as taking on gravely sick people ('adverse selection') and not charging them accordingly is an actuarial unsound principle.  This is not insurance, it is something else.

This nonsense sounds nothing like their promised 'repeal and replace.'  It is bad public health policy.  I rarely agree with Utopian dreamer Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky), but in this case I have complete agreement with him: this is no better than Obamacare.  Costs will not come down, levels of care will not get better, deductibles and premiums will still be God Awful.

Heads have got to roll on this one.  At least The Donald has said that he is open to negotiation on this bill.  Nowhere in this mess is the allowance for insurance companies to cross state lines to compete in any state they choose to participate in.  This alone would do wonders for lowering premiums.  

Regardless of what we finally get out of this Congress and president, it will come up short of getting the job done: control skyrocketing costs of health care.  We started down the path of expensive health care bills when we as a nation no longer paid for services directly to doctors with cash money; a mere 75 years ago, our health care system had no government involvment, no insurance, no middle men, none of that.  Then Franklin Delano Roosevelt decided that things had to change.  And they indeed changed - for the worse.

Back in the day, we paid for health care ourselves, directly to our doctor.  Once we started putting middle men in between our doctors and patients, concern for costs became a thing of the past: why bother worrying about costs if everybody perceives that somebody else is paying for things?

Sure, when we feel like we don't have to pay for it, we'll have the Chateau Briand, the beluga caviar and the Maine lobster.  And keep it coming, damn you!  

And that's what things have come down to.  Nobody wants to have to pay for their health care, only a few measly bucks for a co-pay, but no more.  When did we start with this foolishness of mandating that doctors have to treat patients, regardless of their ability to pay?  That is killing us, too.  Free health care for everybody, woo hoo!

And this latest bill is not going to fix what is essentially wrong with our system.  Everybody thinks it should be almost free, and consume as much doctor's care as we can dream of.

It's killing us.  Some kinda health care, if you ask me.

Wednesday, February 22, 2017

It's kind of nice to have a president again

"We haven't had a president for a very long time. The world took it for granted that we were simply their punching bag. That concept is no longer valid - but it was for 8 miserable years." 

So true.  LL at Virtual Mirage recently penned these words. For the last 8 years, Americans were satisfied that they wanted to be led by someone who had absolutely no executive experience at any point in his life.  Obama had not so much as run a lemonade stand, much less the economy of the greatest nation in the history of mankind.  We were more interested in electing a black guy to the Oval Office than any other reason.  A black guy that couldn't manage his way out of a wet paper bag, much less guide the allocation of our nation's resources to the benefit of the public as a whole.

I recall early on in Barry's God awful administration that he was going to 'focus like a laser' on jobs.  Right.  He held a 'jobs forum,' where he summoned a pack of liberal CEO's and other sundry lefties into a conference room, lectured them for awhile about the virtues of wealth redistribution, and then broke them into focus groups and sent them off into little huddles.  He then commanded them to return their conclusions to him, and he would combine the best of the suggestions, and assemble the best practises that he felt would accomplish creating jobs.

And that was it.  That was his laser focus on jobs.  Good Lord, that had to be the most feeble attempt at managing any major issue facing our country, perhaps ever.  Does anybody remember what good came out of this jobs summit?  Anybody? Buehler?.....Buehler?....(...crickets chirping here...).

For 8 long years, the U.S. never had anything even close to 3% GDP growth.  We just crept along, barely squeaking by.  Year after anemic year.  And now, just a few months after the election of Donald Trump, equity growth in American portfolios has increased a whopping $2.9 TRILLION dollars. In three measly months, two of which The Donald was only the president-elect. 

In his short tenure, Donald Trump has met with enumerable auto execs, titans of Silicon Valley, movers and shakers of all shapes and sizes.  He has single handedly jacked up the confidence of American businesses to levels not seen since, well, ever.  

Donald Trump had more executive experience under his belt before he turned 25 than Barry achieved in his whole miserable life.  And we are seeing the benefits of actually having an accomplished leader calling the shots nationally.

It really is nice to have a president again, after so long without one.  


Friday, February 10, 2017

Time to abolish the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals (and we really mean it this time)

For those of us who remember Newt Gringrich's first run at the presidency in 2011, one of his plans if elected was to abolish the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.  At the time, the ridiculous rulings that emanated from this panel of clowns included banning "one nation under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance.

Also included in Newt's plans that year were colonizing the moon, but I digress.  Gingrich actually laid out plans for eliminating the most reversed federal judicial body in the history of U.S. jurisprudence, and of course the Left had a cow.  The Left has long known that foisting their agenda on Americans is tough using actual votes and the elective process.  Accordingly, they have been steadily making inroads into the judiciary, stacking it with liberal pinkos who make political decisions rather than constitutional ones. Of course they would go apoplectic over losing one of their cherished agenda movers - the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Gingrich points out that Thomas Jefferson eliminated quite a few judicial appointments during his tenure (18 of 35 federal judges bit the dust back then).  The technical framework in doing this today is still in place, and can be done; other than the Supreme Court, the rest of the judiciary is created by Congress, and Congress can un-create it at its pleasure.  

Now a gang of three from this panel of idiots has determined that for any number of irrelevant and ridiculous reasons, the President of the United States does not have the power to control immigration - despite it clearly being a power designated solely to the executive branch of government.  Donald Trump pointed out earlier that even a bad high school student understood the statute.  

Apparently the 9th Circuit folks are packed with very bad high school students.   Time to disband this bunch of morons.

Monday, February 6, 2017

Marketing and liberalism - the quest for eyeballs

The cost of a 30-second ad during this year's Super Bowl would reportedly set you back $5,000,000 bucks.  At first glance, it would seem that this would be a colossal waste of resources, and yet each and every available advertising slot during this year's game were gobbled up by businesses seeking 'eyeballs' to view the merits of their products.

The reason this marketing venue works is an old one: the Law of Large Numbers.  Dumbing down the statistical explanation to my level, it just means that if you throw enough mud at a wall, sure; most of it will slough off and wind up on the floor.  But a marginal amount of that mud will stick to the wall.  And it is this marginal mud that keeps businesses afloat.

When I was studying marketing back in my college days (I got a degree in the stuff, woo hoo...), we would call this concept on ad effectiveness "reach."  How many potential customers will view the pitch, and of those that see it, how many will be persuaded to dig into their wallets and fork over the cash?  We now call this concept of marketing reach "eyeballs."  An estimated 400,000,000 people watched this year's Super Bowl.  That would be 796,838,397 eyeballs (not everybody has two eyeballs, but most do).  That's a lot of eyeballs.  And the sponsors of those ads will all see the revenues come pouring in, now that the missus and millions of her like minded ilk will head to the cleaning aisle at the Piggly Wiggly and grab herself a bottle of Mr, Clean.  Why?  Because a sexy Mr. Clean really mopped the floor in the Super Bowl ad this year, lots of eyeballs can't be wrong.  

Enter politics and eyeballs.  Nancy Pelosi (D-Ca), the nominal head of the Democrat Party now that Barry is no longer an elected official, when asked why her Democrats over the last 8 years have lost multiple gubernatorial races, many seats in Congress, and countless more at the state and local levels, seems to have an answer: she and her ilk didn't get the word out.

That's right, boys and girls.  Red Nancy blames her party's woes on bad marketing: not enough eyeballs on their message.  Hillary Clinton outspent The Donald by maybe 8 - 1, and the DNC probably outspent the RNC by 2-1 nationally.  All of this spending was for ads, primarily blasting conservative values, spreading lies about what Democrats could do for our nation, etc.  

Nancy, you guys got the word out.  You reached those eyeballs.  Here's what you and your liberal buddies don't get: when you put lipstick on a pig, at the end of the day, that glamorous pig is still a pig.  Your message fell on deaf ears.  Or, more pertinent to this post, all of the eyeballs that laid their vision on your lies and Utopian garbage saw it for what it was.  Crap.

But go ahead, Nancy.  Fire the old marketing guys, the ones you say didn't get the word out.  Hire some new guys, guys who understand this 'eyeball' concept.  That's what will get your power back, Nance.  Those gavels will be back in your fingers before you know it.  No, don't take a deep down look at what you stand for, and what American's don't believe in anymore.  Don't toss all of that out.  No, no. Keep it, and next time, just spend more money.

Get more eyeballs involved, Nancy.  That's what you should do.


Tuesday, January 24, 2017

"Peaceful transfer of power" - not so much anymore

If last Saturday's mass demonstrations are any indication of days to come, I see the Founding Father's visions of 'peaceful transfer of power' coming to an end, and sooner rather than later.

The smashing of windows, burning of cars and trash barrels in the streets is not what I would call peaceful.  Yes, the power was transferred from a Democrat in the White House to a Republican, but so far it has been anything but peaceful.

Also witness the unhinged lunacy on the part of the folks that lost the election.  That pinch-faced liberal hag on the Alaskan Airlines flight who completely lost her composure, got kicked off the plane after she berated her fellow passenger simply because he suggested that he did not adhere to her extreme liberal views of how things should be run in our country.  Peaceful transfer of power?  Hardly.

A woman was being interviewed at the Washington D.C. women's rally on Saturday and said (I paraphrase here) "if women continue to march in the streets, it will lead to action."  I would be curious to know just what kind of 'action' this cretin is talking about.  Does she think that Donald Trump, when seeing protests against him will simply abdicate his office, and swear Hillary Clinton to the presidency?  I believe she just might think this will happen.  And of course most people with half a brain understand that this will never happen.

Or maybe she really doesn't know what kind of  'action' she wants, she just knows that things didn't go her way, and she truly believes in her teensy brain that she should get what she wants when she wants it.  And that stomping her feet, setting things on fire and smashing windows will achieve these goals.  Much like a 4-year old in K-Mart, who throws a wild tantrum when mommie doesn't buy him that box of Fruit Loops.

What she is talking about, all of this 'action' rhetoric, is something that everybody else except unthinking dolts like her and her movement understands: she is talking about violent revolution. 

This is how people have transferred power in every other society on earth since man crawled out of the ooze: not until our Founding Fathers wrote up how things could peacefully change with the results of peaceful elections,  social change was handled by the most people with the biggest guns and the angriest voices leading the largest mobs, leading to lots of blood in the streets. This was how it was done back in the good ol' days.

By the looks of this past week, this is going to be how the Left wants things to return to; gunfire and bloodshed.  Unfortunately, the Left has never really been keen on gun ownership, and they have not thought this revolution thing all the way through: the only way revolutions work is with an armed movement, and the only side in this upcoming skirmish that is openly and proudly armed is the other side (that would be me and my ilk).  Sure, they are familiar with Molotov cocktails, crow bars, sticks and stones, but guns?  Uh uh.

I don't see this working out for the liberal commie pinkos in the end.  This revolution business requires fire power, something they are still a bit squeamish about.  And until that changes, they will be resigned to setting garbage cans on fire, and getting arrested.  

Some revolution.  But they will eventually get it figured out, and once that happens, the notion of 'peaceful transfer of power' would be a quaint memory. 

Saturday, January 21, 2017

American carnage

The first national voice we heard that warned us against the rise of the 'New World Order' was during the 1992 presidential campaign, when H. Ross Perot correctly predicted that upon the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), we all would hear this 'giant sucking sound' of American jobs screaming across the border to Mexico.

Despite the little guy being a complete nut job, he was certainly right about that.  American corporations took full advantage of this immediate access to dirt cheap labor, and closed American factories hand over fist in their clamor to ship these American manufacturing jobs to the sweat shops and chain gang production crews in Mexico and later China.  

Donald Trump correctly points out this "American carnage," and what that giant sucking sound created in his inaugural address, "We’ve made other countries rich while the wealth, strength, and confidence of our country has disappeared over the horizon.  One by one, the factories shuttered and left our shores, with not even a thought about the millions upon millions of American workers left behind.  The wealth of our middle class has been ripped from their homes and then redistributed across the entire world."

President Trump referred to the rusted shells of vacant factories scattered across the American landscape like tombstones.  Many fear that this president will create a trade war that will damage this economy.  

This economy has been damaged almost beyond repair already by unfair trade practices.  We ship our goods overseas and they are met on the receiving shores with a 10% tariff, only they call it something else.  We buy goods from overseas, and charge them nothing, for the most part.  What kind of crap is this?  Donald Trump vows to end this kind of garbage.  If you want to call this a trade war, so be it.  Fair trade is one thing, giving away the store is another.

Donald Trump received a B.A. in Economics from the Wharton School of Business, and the basic tenets of economics are supply and demand, Adam Smith's 'invisible hand' and theories of trade that involve a principle called 'comparative advantage.'

I also studied economics, albeit at a commie pinko liberal leftist public school in Oregon (U. of Oregon).  I was subjected to the same business concepts that The Donald studied at Wharton.  What I never understood was my professor's insistence that 'comparative advantage' was a good thing: if production occurs in an underdeveloped country of a product that was invented and produced initially in the U.S., it would leave us more productive folk in the U.S. free to do what we are better positioned to do: stand in the unemployment line.  That's not exactly their texts, but that's what it has resulted in over the long run these last 25 years.

In other words, these learned men of letters were telling me that 2+2=5.  I regurgitated this nonsense back to the professors on the tests, got B's in the stuff but was never a true believer.  It never made sense to me then, and it still doesn't make sense to me now.

And it doesn't make sense to Donald J. Trump, either.  Finally, a guy who gets it.  Nuts to this 'New World Order' bullshit. When we stop shipping our jobs overseas, without consideration for what happens to the Americans whose jobs were pulled out from under them, things will turn around.  

We need to think of Americans and their benefit first.  And unlike George Will, who thinks The Donald's speech was the worst speech ever given in the history of mankind, I think that this mindset will go far in making America great again.

Take that to the bank, George.  And may God Bless our new President, Donald J. Trump.

Thursday, January 12, 2017

Trump derangement syndrome raging across the nation

I have been admonished not to mention Donald Trump's victory at an upcoming visit of mine owing to an attendee's wife being severely distraught over the election results.  "Please don't poke the beehive," hubby pleads.  

I completely understand this request, and I have promised to not discuss politics under any circumstances.  It was a terribly long, nightmarish eight years that I felt extremely disheartened and feared for the future of the country.  Especially after Obama's re-election; good Lord, how could we have given this socialist ANOTHER FOUR YEARS to destroy what's left of the Founding Father's vision for America.  

And my fears were not invalid.  Obamacare has so weakened our economy since no self respecting employer would ever consider hiring a full time worker, lest his bottom line get eaten away by these punitive taxes (yes, taxes, according to Chief Justice John Roberts).  Many previously full time workers have had their hours slashed so that employers can remain in business.  

Yes, now the shoe is on the other foot, and the liberals across the country are fit to be tied.  There is great wailing and gnashing of teeth over the prospect that Donald Trump will overturn many of Obama's economy wrecking initiatives and his transfer of wealth schemes.  Barry promised to remake America, and now it appears that The Donald is un-making those remakings of Barry's.  Repealing and replacing Obamacare is a great start.  

But the liberals will not take this lying down.  They will not go quietly into that good night.  Not on your life.  A communist leftist organization 'Grab Your Wallet' has called on Americans to boycott any business that has anything to do with Donald Trump or his company affiliations.  L.L. Bean co-owner and board member Linda Bean gave a few measly bucks of her own personal money to the Trump campaign, and now these slime balls are calling for a complete boycott of L.L. Bean.  

I don't dismiss this boycott as frivolous.  In fact, I encourage conservatives to emulate this tactic: since they are boycotting conservative interests (and L.L. Bean is by no means conservative, they want to sell their popular 'Bean Boots' to both liberals and conservatives), conservatives should boycott liberal interests at every turn.  What's good for the goose is good for the gander: if you are an employer and you find out that one of your employees is liberal, fire them immediately.  If you know of a business that is owned by liberals who push their liberal agenda via their company, boycott them.  Ben & Jerry's ice cream comes to mind - and unless you are a sumo wrestler who needs this product to remain competitive, stay clear of it.

And don't stop there: if  a member of your family is liberal, give it your best shot to convert them to sanity.  If all efforts fail, and they still insist on voting Democratic, wearing Birkenstocks and eating Ben & Jerry's ice cream, shun them.  Don't go to their birthday parties, weddings, bar mitzvahs or even funerals.  

Trump Derangement Syndrome is raging out of control.  Rather than just sitting back and watching it play out (to our detriment), we need to fight back: fight fire with fire.  Boycott Democrat/liberal interests where ever they are.  

  

Sunday, January 1, 2017

The future of the Democrat party - lots of wandering in the wilderness

When a national party, either Republican or Democrat, loses in a catastrophic landslide, some retrospective soul searching is always a good idea.  What happened?  Why did we get our butts kicked? How can we reverse our fortunes going forward?

It happens periodically to both parties.  The Goldwater debacle in 1964 set the GOP back perhaps a generation.  They watched as their depleted minorities stood by helplessly while their counterparts, the Democrats, spent money we didn't have on LBJ's 'The Great Society,' and 'War on Poverty,' where everybody would have a chicken in every pot and a Cadillac in every garage.  

The Democrats lost their 40 continuous years as a majority in the House when Newt Gingrich and his Contract with America swept the Republicans into power in the 1994 mid year elections.  These Democrats then sat back helplessly as Newt and the GOP worked to establish a balanced budget, drastically cut back on welfare and generally derailed many Great Society boondoggles (not nearly enough, but some) to the lament of the Dems in the minority. And even the then-president Bill Clinton (D) said at the time: 'the era of big government is over.'  He didn't mean it, but he said it.

Then the pendulum swung back the Dems way in 2006 after a bungled GOP majority became what Nancy Pelosi correctly termed the 'culture of corruption,' with perverts Mark Foley and Denny Hastert leading the GOP demise.  Nancy grabbed the gavel and ran with it, again spending money we didn't have hand over fist, much like a drunken sailor.  

Ten years later, here we are again, with the GOP winning huge gains in many state legislatures, gubernatorial races and majorities in all three branches of government (assuming Donald Trump nominates a rock ribbed constitution originalist to replace Antonin Scalia on the SCOTUS).

Historically, all the Dems need to do is wait ten to fifteen years, and the gavels of power will be back in their hands.  During this time in the wilderness, however, it is customary for the party out of power to figure out how they bungled things, how best to fix them and implement their fixes to get them out of their current funk.  

Not this time.  The Democrats have not figured things out, not at all.  They think that they simply did not get their message out.  The DNC and Hillary Clinton campaign poured $6 dollars into messaging for every $1 that the RNC and Donald Trump ponied up. This statistic alone would debunk the 'not getting their message out' excuse for failure.  Americans heard the Democrats loud and clear. They just didn't believe what they were hearing.

Now they blame the Russians for outing their malfeasance and skulduggery via Wikileaks.  This, despite Julian Assange adamantly insisting that their info came from within a disgruntled channel of the DNC, and not the Russians.  Nope, that couldn't have been the cause for their drubbing.  No, it was those rascally Russians ratting their rottenness out to the public.  And of course, all of the aforementioned out-ratted malfeasance and skulduggery was never repudiated.  It was all true, such as Donna Brazile providing Hillary Clinton the questions in advance of the debates.  Not denied, not at all.  Or Debbie Blabbermouth Schultz, then-DNC Chair-person undermining Bernie Sanders during the Dem primaries.  True.  Not denied, dead to nuts accurate.

No, none of this malfeasance and skulduggery was the issue.  The issue what that it was made public.  That's what they are crabbing about.  That's why they lost, they figure.  They had agents on behalf of the GOP messing up their modus operandi.  Russians, primarily. If it weren't for those rotten Rooskies, they would still be in power and Americans would still love them.  So wrong, so terribly wrong, but this is what they are hanging their hat on.  So be it.  Just for the record, Americans don't like seeing brazen, open malfeasance and skulduggery.  It is unseemly and unattractive to most voters, but Dems don't get that.

This time around, the Dems may be wandering around in the political desert for longer than usual, assuming the GOP doesn't self destruct (which is not out of the question).  If they can't relate with the Zeitgeist and connect with reality, then they deserve their time in banishment from power.