My parents never had much money. So, one Christmas I was shocked that they bought me a cap pistol. It was a Colt Buntline special. They pointed out that if I was going to have a toy gun, it should be one used by Wyatt Earp, who was one of the good guys. I am not sure where they got their information about Wyatt Earp. But I can guess. We lived in a remote part of the Upper Peninsula. We had two choices for a TV Channel. One was in Marquette, Michigan, which was 106 miles away (119 miles by car). The other was in Duluth, Minnesota, which was 117 miles away (151 miles by car.)  Some of the distance to Duluth was over water, Lake Superior, so the reception was about the same, lousy. But, on a good night, if you turned the antenna just right, you could actually watch TV. One of the shows playing during that time was The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, so I assume that was the source of their information. Anyway, I became a Wyatt Earp fan. Later, I actually did some research on this and found out almost everything I knew about Wyatt Earp was wrong. He was a lot of things but being a good guy was definitely a part time occupation.

The Gun Fight at the O.K. Corral is one of the best known and least known incidents in the history of the West. We recently watched “The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral” starting Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas. I ended up laughing most of the way through, because I have done some research and very little of this came close to resembling true history.

Shootout at the O.K. Corral – HISTORY

The gunfight at the O.K. Corral didn’t actually take place at the O.K. Corral. It happened in a vacant lot next to a photography studio. If you go to Tombstone today, you can still see the actual location and it probably looks pretty much the same. The entire gun fight took about 30 seconds. The people involved were socially distanced, about six feet apart. Three people were killed, and it seems like everyone, but Wyatt Earp was injured. Wyatt Earp wasn’t even the main lawman in this battle, that would have been his brother Virgil who was the local Marshal.

While even today all the details about this event are a little murky, we can still learn a lot from this. One thing that is interesting is that Sheriff Behan was a Democrat who was allegedly was elected by an election that was obviously fraudulent. Sound familiar? The Earp’s by the way, were Republicans.

Sheriff Behan who witnessed the shootout, arrested the Earp’s and Doc Holiday, and charged them with murder. The trial was held a month later and they were acquitted by the judge. Like a lot of stories about the West, it is not always easy to distinguish between the good guys and the bad guys. But the judge, at least, thought the Earp’s had the better argument. It might surprise you to know that a lot of people in Tombstone at the time, probably Democrats, thought the Earp’s were just murderers.

Now one expects Hollywood movies to get all or any of the facts right. Hollywood seldom worries about facts getting in the way of a good story. Neither, apparently, do Hollywood celebrities. That makes sense when you consider that they lie to people for a living.

But when Hollywood gets something wrong, it is mostly amusing. It is not nearly as amusing when this happens in real life and the consequences are devastating. It seems obvious to me, and about 74 million other people, that this election was stolen. The least likely possibility is that Joe Biden won in a landslide. Election fraud is not exactly new, corruption in Democratic strongholds dates back to Tammany Hall and beyond. We can be sure Republican steal too, it’s just that Democrats are much better at it.

But this was just too obvious, and Joe Biden is not remotely capable of being President of the United States. Electing the wrong person to make stupid votes in the Senate is one thing but electing someone to the most powerful position in the world who is totally incapable of handling that awesome responsibility is something else. No one, in either party, had the courage to admit the obvious. Even after the election, when the fraud was obvious, one would expect someone to do something. Instead, everyone looked the other way and said: “Don’t expect me to fix this.” The honorable thing, they all decided, was to let Democracy work, even when it clearly didn’t work. To honor the people’s choice even though it clearly wasn’t the people’s choice. And oh, by the way, when failure to act would mean making Joe Biden President of the United States, something that should have terrified a lot of people.

Would any of you allow some drunk to drive your car? Would you allow an incompetent doctor to operate on someone? Of course not. You would find a way to stop this. No one would even argue that ignoring this would be the ethical thing to do. Yet, what could be more unethical that turning over the Presidency to someone so obviously incapable?

The awful truth is becoming too obvious to ignore. Joe Biden not only has shown zero capability to provide leadership, but he also signed executive orders that are doing enormous damage. The only good news is that he is hurting Democrats just as much as he is hurting Republicans. For example, his decision to revoke the permit for the Keystone Pipeline put thousands of highly paid union workers out of a job. The union, that strongly supported his candidacy, is justifiably furious. He just ordered ICE to immediately release all illegal aliens currently in custody. Nice! This includes some very dangerous people who are guaranteed to commit heinous crimes. Thousands of people are already headed toward our southern border, expecting Joe to keep his promises. He did this and much more on his first two days in office. And then was so exhausted by the effort that he took today off. Does anyone really think this is going to work out? Anyone?

While the usual suspects are still pretending Joe has a plan to deal with COVID and predictably blaming everything on Trump, Joe is already starting to get some bad press. He has no plan. He even admitted he has no plan. The only glimmer of hope is the vaccine we have solely because Donald Trump ignored Democrats and developed a strategy that miraculously produced not one, but two and possibly more vaccines in less than a year.

But Donald is gone, sitting silently on his golf cart in Florida, so nothing else matters. We did it! We got rid of Orange hair and replaced him with Joe Biden. What could possibly go wrong. That is actually easy to answer. Just watch your TV, if you can stomach this. This is beyond obvious to a lot of us already and will be beyond obvious to almost everyone soon. As for me, I now spend more time watching dull old movies, like “The Gunfight at The O.K. Corral” because almost anything is preferable to watching the news.

TDM

Shortly after World War II ended, the U.S. Army had a problem. They had a lot of equipment they no longer needed and did not expect to need in the future. So, it was no surprise that they put an ad in newspapers, all over the country, offering to sell surplus army training rifles a very low price. My father and his best friend, both responded to the ad and sent the money. But there was one major difference between the letters they wrote. My father wrote that he wanted to use the rifle for deer hunting. He got a letter back, with a return of his money, saying these were training rifles, made entirely out of wood, and so were useless as a hunting rifle. His friend apparently got a wooden rifle, although he would never admit that.

All of us, who have been on this planet for a while, have purchased something that turned out to be far different than what we expected. We used to say that a couple wasn’t really married until they had bought a vacuum cleaner from a door-to-door salesman. In most cases a bad purchase only results in a good story. But in other cases, the results can be tragic. Today, we are already seeing a nationwide case of buyer’s remorse. A lot of people were too focused on getting rid of Donald Trump to realize that Joe Biden was and is a walking disaster. Even some people in the MSM have already figured this out. Soon, this will be obvious to everyone.

Today, there are reports the United States did something it has not done in years. It bought oil from Russia and Venezuela. CNN ran a new story, leaked by the Biden administration, saying they inherited no vaccine distribution system from the Trump administration and had to start from scratch. Even Dr. Fauci, who clearly hates Trump, knocked that down. He pointed out that 36 million doses of vaccine had already been delivered and we were vaccinating about 1 million people every day. So, when Joe bragged about how his new vaccine delivery system might even deliver a staggering 100 million doses during the first 100 days, the MSM missed the fact that this would be a slow down over what the Trump administration was already delivering. Brilliant! CNN only repeated this idiotic story 57 times before realizing that everyone else was snickering at their stupidity.

Political, which ignored the obvious signs of senility from Joe Biden before the inauguration, accidentally documented them during the following story:

Writing a speech for Biden can be hell. And that was before the inaugural. – POLITICO

I would never say this,” Biden once snapped at an aide, aghast over the prepared remarks he was reviewing, according to a person in the room during a speech prep session last year. “Where did you get this from?’”

The aide explained that Biden had just said it in a public speech a couple of weeks earlier.

Have you noticed something else that changed as soon as Joe was safely sworn into office? CNN dropped the banner showing COVID 19 statistics. If you watch the news on TV last night, you probably noticed it did not lead with how many new cases of COVID 19 happened or how many people died from COVID 19. Instead, it focused on lining up for the vaccine. There is a reason for that.  Shortly after the inauguration, WHO sent out a directive changing the way positive cases are reported and the way to record COVID 19 deaths.  This change means the number of positive cases will immediately drop as will the number of new COVID 19 deaths.  This creates the illusion of change, when the only real change is that they have stopped lying to us.

Oh, they will still report that more than 400,000 people were killed by Donald Trump, but from now on the statistics will look very different. They are hoping no one notices and believe that miraculously, Joe Biden cured COVID. The DC Mayor approved indoor dining, the day after the inauguration, but that does not include the National Guard soldiers sleeping on the floor of a parking garage.

Joe Biden thought he gave a brilliant inaugural address, and it was perfect except for the part where he called 74 million people domestic terrorists. Chris Wallace was too distracted by the thrill running up his leg to notice this minor detail.

In the meantime, the MSM is in a state of shock. Shutting off Donald Trump’s twitter account means that there was nothing from Donald Trump to comment on. The only thing left is this impeachment thing, which is guaranteed to embarrass Democrats if they stupidly continue with this fiasco. They are left to report on what Biden is doing, and what he is doing is incredibly stupid bordering on insane. Did you notice that after Joe signed the Executive Order requiring everyone to wear a mask whenever on federal property, he posed for a photo op at the Lincoln Memorial without a mask? When his press secretary was asked about this, she said he was too busy celebrating to wear a mask. Nice!

Here is what is important to remember. The MSM NEEDS bad news. For the last four years, they could rail against Donald Trump and call that bad news. But Trump is gone, so they need to find something else to report on. That leaves, gasp, reporting on what Biden is doing. Like how Joe just decided to let biological males compete with biological females, if the male felt girlish, in any sports program receiving federal aid. Biden apparently failed to realize that more than half of the Democrats who foolishly supported him are, gasp, biological females who don’t find this amusing.

The entire country has bought a wooden rifle. Even the MSM is starting to realize this gun will never work.  As for me, I am looking for a license plate that says: “Don’t blame me, I didn’t vote for Biden.” I predict sales will exceed 74 million.

TDM

Shortly after I finished this, I found the following article on MSN.

Maddow Blog | Rand Paul outraged by the wrong part of Biden’s inaugural address (msn.com)

There are people, including Rand Paul, who read this speech exactly the same way I read it.

“If you read his speech and listen to it carefully, much of it is thinly-veiled innuendo calling us white supremacists, calling us racists, calling us every name in the book, calling us people who don’t tell the truth,” Paul said on Fox News Primetime.

This story is not going away anytime soon.  Imagine if Trump had said something like this. The MSM would have gone ballistic.

TDM

The bad news is that the Democrats and their partners in the MSM really are on a mission to destroy any opposition to their agenda. The good news is that they are beyond delusional and there is zero chance they will succeed.

I forced myself to read Biden’s inaugural speech. He obviously did not write this. While Chris Wallace thought it was brilliant and poetic, it was far from that. He went from calling for unity to making claims that are not only false, but they are also absurd. Some of this stuff is straight out of BLM material all based on a false narrative.  Here is a link to the text:

Text of Biden’s inaugural address as the 46th president (yahoo.com)

A cry for racial justice some 400 years in the making moves us. The dream of justice for all will be deferred no longer.

The cry for survival comes from the planet itself. A cry that can’t be any more desperate or any more clear. And now a rise of political extremism, white supremacy, domestic terrorism that we must confront and we will defeat.

That is absurd. He describes a rise of political extremism, white supremacy, and domestic terrorism that we must confront and defeat. What on earth is he talking about? Have any of you see that? Have even your liberal neighbors seen that? Is he seriously equating those people who protested at the Capital last week with domestic terrorism?

That is exactly what he said on January 7, 2021:

“Yesterday in my view one of the darkest days in the history of our nation, an unprecedented assault on our democracy, an assault literally on the citadel of liberty and the United States Capitol itself, an assault on the rule of law, an assault on the most sacred of American undertakings ratifying the will of the people and choosing the leadership of their government. All of us here grieve the loss of life, grieve the desecration of the people’s house but we–what we witnessed yesterday was not dissent, it was not disorder, it was not protest, it was chaos.

They weren’t protesters, don’t dare call them protesters. They were a riotous mob, insurrectionists, domestic terrorists. It is that basic, it is that simple and I wish we could say we couldn’t see it coming but that isn’t true. We could see it coming. The past four years we have had a president who has made his contempt for our democracy, our Constitution, the rule of law clear in everything he has done. “

I wonder how many liberals realize what Biden really said. This is delusional.

He has attacked our intelligence services who dared tell the American people the truth about the effort of a foreign power to elect him four years ago choosing instead to believe the word of Vladimir Putin over the word of those who have sworn their allegiance to this nation, many of whom had risk their lives in the service of this nation. He deployed the United States military tear-gassing peaceful protesters in pursuit of a photo opportunity in the service of his reelection even holding the Bible upside down, the action that led to an apology from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and an outspoken denunciation of the use of military for domestic political purposes from scores, scores of former military leaders and Secretaries of Defense led by Secretary Cheney.

Biden still believes that Trump colluded with Russia. Is he unaware that this was totally discredited by the Mueller report? Does Biden really believe the Antifa and BLM rioters who attacked the White House last summer were peaceful protestors. He even accuses Trump of holding a Bible upside down, even though there is photo showing this is not true.

The reality is that over half the population believes that this election was stolen, and they are not members of a cult deluded by Donald Trump. Instead, they are people who no longer trust the MSM and can see what is obviously true for themselves.

Watch what liberals are posting these days. There are a lot of articles trashing Trump and grateful for Biden, but none of them are posting quotes from this speech and I don’t see anyone claiming that anyone who supported Trump is a domestic terrorist. They think we are wrong and don’t understand the facts, but they don’t believe we are a threat to democracy.

The plans to suppress free speech are DOA. They are clearly unconstitutional and even liberal courts are likely to stop this. Trump appointed 300 Federal Judges and the Supreme Court is very conservative. This will be stopped immediately by the courts probably accompanied by a brutal rebuke.

The illusion that Biden is somehow competent has been shattered on day one. Most Presidents get a 100-day honeymoon. Biden didn’t make it to the wedding night. At some point, even the MSM will notice.

The MSM has very low credibility and no one will buy what they are selling. The people making these grand plans are living in a tiny bubble that is about to be burst. The last thing even Biden supporters want is for him to go to war with half the country. Yes, they hated Trump. Yes, they are glad he is gone. But they didn’t bargain for this.

Abraham Lincoln: “You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”

A lot of people are in denial of what Biden has said and what is being proposed. When they understand this, they will be just as appalled as you. They will be confronted with the reality of who has been lying to them and who has not. They believe a lot of things that are not true, but this is a bridge too far and that will be obvious sooner than you think.

TDM

Most people, who were raised in more modern parts of the country, are unfamiliar with an important part of our history. I was raised in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan up until I was a junior in high school. From the 4^th through the 9^th grades, we lived in a little town called Bergland, Michigan. This was very remote. It was 35 miles to the nearest grocery store.  In a location like this, there were still a lot of people using outhouses. Even homes that had indoor plumbing often had an outhouse, no longer used, in their back yard. In the UP we used to celebrate “Gate Night” which was the night before Halloween. It was fun to push over some of those outhouses. Some people called it “Devil’s Night.”

In case you think I am making this up, read the following article from livescience.com. https://www.livescience.com/5149-devil-night-history-pre-halloween-pranks.html

Before the 20th century, Halloween mischief in the United States and Canada happened on Oct. 31 and consisted of tipping over outhouses, unhinging farmer’s gates, throwing eggs at houses and the like.

The story goes of a young boy who pushed over his parent’s own outhouse on Gate Night. His father confronted him the next day, furious. It seems that this outhouse was placed near the bank of a river, and when it was pushed over, if fell into the river. The boy had been in school that morning when the teacher told the story about George Washington cutting down an apple tree. When his father confronted him and asked if he had cut down the apple tree, young George confessed. His father was so impressed that he decided not to punish George. It is highly unlikely that was a true story.

But the boy who pushed over the outhouse decided this was worth a try. So, he confessed and admitted to his dad that yes, he had pushed over the outhouse into the river. At which point the father took off his leather belt and beat the living crap (pun intended) out of him. After the punishment was over, the boy sobbed and said: “When George Washington told the truth about cutting down the apple tree, his father forgave him and didn’t punish him. Why did you have to beat me?” The father responded: “Probably because George Washington’s father wasn’t in the apple tree.”

At times like these, a little humor can go a long way. Just remember when Democrats pushed Joe Biden into the White House, they forgot who was in the outhouse.

TDM

Now is a time to remember 1993. Bill Clinton had just been elected President of the United States. We had replaced a President who was extremely qualified and who had done an excellent job with trailer trash from Arkansas. The House and the Senate were both controlled by Democrats. Most people paying attention were horrified. Then, as now, the MSM had been the propaganda arm of the Democratic Party. Democrats looked like they were in control and Republicans would never win another election. But one man, a congressman from Georgia saw this differently. Where others saw disaster, he saw opportunity. His name was Newt Gingrich, and he wrote the contract with American that resulted in Republicans gaining control of the House and the Senate two years later, in 1994. By January 1995, when that new congress took office, everything changed.

Let me remind people how bad things looked in January 1993. There were 258 Democrats in the House, 176 Republicans and 1 Independent.  In 1993 the Senate had 58 Democrats and 42 Republicans. Democrats had far more control than they have now.  Yet as bad as things were in 1993, two years later, everything changed. In January 1995 there were 204 Democrats in the House, 230 Republicans and 1 Independent. In 1995 the senate had 53 Republicans and 47 Democrats.

Today, in the House there are 222 Democrats and 211 Republicans. In the Senate there are 48 Democrats, 2 Independents and 50 Republicans. Since the “so-called,” Independents vote with the Democrats this is a tie, with VP Kamala Harris holding the tie breaking vote. Democrats are far weaker today than they were in 1993.

Following is an opinion written by Newt Gingrich, on December 21, 2020. This is a reminder to all of us that real leaders, not fooled by the nonsense are still out there. Smart Republicans will pay close attention to what New Gingrich is saying, because he has experience in dealing with an even worse situation and turning it completely around:

Why I will not accept Joe Biden as president – Washington Times

Joe Biden will issue executive orders, most of them idiotic and unconstitutional. They will be truly awful, but also unconstitutional. Most of them will be challenged in court, and like Obama, Biden will lose most of those challenges. Remember, Trump put in 300 new conservative federal judges.

Masses of people are already headed toward our border, toward promises Biden made but cannot possibly keep. This is going to be a serious problem. While Obama talked about open borders, it was Obama who built all those cages. Biden will be lucky if he does not have to start shooting people.

Here are the Executive orders to be issued by Joe Biden today.

*Rejoin the WHO (dominated by China and funded by us).

*Issue a mask mandate requiring face covering and physical distance in all federal buildings and on federal lands. He will ask Americans to wear masks for the next 100 days, everywhere, including indoors at home with family.

*Direct federal agencies to extend eviction and foreclosure moratoriums until at least March 31.

*End restrictions on travel and immigration form some Muslim countries and resume VISA processing.

*Rejoin the Paris Climate accord and restore Obama-era  efforts to combat climate change.

*Revote the permits for the Keystone XL Pipeline

*Revise fuel standards and issue a temporary moratorium on all oil and natural gas leasing in the Artic National Wildlife Reserve.

*Count noncitizens in the U.S. Census.

*Bolster sanctuary cities and DACA

*Require every government agency to conduct a baseline review on whether its policy disadvantage any demographic group.

*Shut down the 1776 commission Trump established to reverse liberals re-writing history.

*Install new protection prohibiting workplace discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation.

I don’t need to tell any of you why these executive orders will be a complete disaster. You already know gas prices are going to skyrocket, taxes are going to increase, regulations are going to increase, and it is going to become very expensive to heat or cool your home. The MSM may not notice this, but everyone else will see this every time they fill up their car or pay an energy bill.

The economy will sink faster than the Titanic. Unemployment will soar and the government, already running out of money, will be forced to cut spending while raising taxes. No one will be happy. The biggest migration will not be toward our southern border, but rather people fleeing blue states run by Democrats and heading toward red states run by Republicans.

Oh, by the way, the lockdowns will continue, COVID will get worse and a lot of people are not going to be enthusiastic about being forced to take a vaccine they considered dangerous and unnecessary. Now combine that with Joe Biden being Joe Biden and more than half the people convinced that Democrats stole the election. Nice!

This is 2021 and if you look out your window today, it looks bleak. But, if you look just a farther you can see 2022 on the horizon and it will get here sooner than you can even imagine. We are in for a bumpy ride, but the bumpier it gets the sooner people will do whatever it takes to get back on a better path. California may lead the way because I really think Gavin Newsom is about to be recalled. Hopefully, he will be replaced by someone better than Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Because we live in America, not Venezuela, the future still looks bright, for those willing to see both what is happening now and what is yet to come. As Sarah Palin recently said, I can see 2022 from my window. We all need to look back to the future.

TDM

Democrats and Republicans agree on one thing. We are headed in the wrong direction.

https://dailycaller.com/2021/01/18/poll-usa-today-suffolk-university-country-wrong-direction-trump-biden/

This has deteriorated rapidly since the end of December. Then, about half of the population thought we were headed in the wrong direction. Now that has leaped to about 2/3^rd. Even more troubling is that only about 22% of the population thinks we are headed in the right direction. I believe we are about to experience a nationwide display of road rage.

Democrats and their supporters in the MSM successfully got Donald Trump out of the White House.  They demonized him to the extent that a lot of people are celebrating without regard to how this impacts them. Too busy rejoicing at his downfall to focus on what happens next. This is easy to understand. Donald Trump contributed to this. He is famous for bragging about himself and all his accomplishments. That turns off a lot of people. No one likes a show boater.

This reminds me of other famous show boaters. One example was Reggie Jackson, who considered himself the greatest baseball player who ever lived. Another was Deon Sanders, who was also deeply in love with himself. But both these people performed very well and the teams that had them were willing to put up with the nonsense in exchange for winning.

This reminded me of a very funny story. My boss was one of the owners of the San Francisco Giants. He called me into his office one day, told me to be silent, and then he called Bob Quinn, the General Manager of the Giants and put him on speaker. The Giants were trying to sign Deon Sanders. So, my boss asked how that was going. Quinn’s response was: “The ego has landed.” I had great difficulty restraining the urge to laugh out loud.

The point being that although Trump has his issues, the country did well under his leadership. That is why about 74 million people voted for him. In addition, in something that is a shock to liberals, some people like his style. That is one reason Democrats were so anxious to exploit COVID 19. Prior to COVID, the country was doing extremely well, and Trump was coasting to re-election. While the media predicably blamed everything on Donald Trump, other people realized that it was blue states run by Democrats that were taking a bad situation and making it worse.

Now that Democrats have seized control, they have also inherited ownership. People think we are headed in the wrong direction and they want that fixed asap. There’s the rub. Nothing Biden is proposing is going to fix this. If anything, he is more likely to make things worse, much worse. Incredibly, even though lockdowns have clearly not worked, Democrats have convinced themselves that doing it one more time, but more efficiently, will fix the problem. Biden is even talking about requiring masks when you are indoors at home. Seriously? They also are relying on the vaccine, we only have because of Donald Trump, and working overtime to muck up the distribution.

For example, some propose requiring children to get vaccinated before they can go back to school. This, of course, is after your child is required to chose its prefered pronoun in case they feel binary. Brilliant, give the vaccine to the people who need it the least. A lot of parents are going to be more than a little reluctant to have Johnny get that vaccine. There are already reports that up to 40% of first responders are saying no. The people who want and need the vaccine, those of us who are age 65 and older, appear to be at the bottom of the list. Biden is already talking about setting up federal distribution centers in under-served areas. That may be politically correct but could slow things down where the vaccine is needed the most.

He is planning on stopping construction on the Keystone Pipeline, something that will guarantee an increase in the price of gas. It will also put thousands of people currently working on the pipeline out of work. Nice!  He is going to have a mess on our southern border because he has been telling people they can come here and get free healthcare and a path to citizenship. Now he is telling them to stay home, but odds are they won’t listen. He is planning on giving 11 million illegal aliens a path to citizenship. He may be shocked to learn that many of them won’t even want that. It is cheaper to work under the table and avoid paying taxes. He is also proposing a $15 national minimum wage which will be devastating to some small business owners and will have the biggest negative impact on minorities.

By the way, the party that wants to defund the police, has surrounded itself with 25,000 troops so Joe can be sworn in safely in the first digital inauguration. I predict a lot of people will respond digitally, using their middle finger.

I could go on, but you get the point. Not only is Biden doing nothing to turn us around from traveling in the wrong direction, but he is also putting his foot on the gas pedal and taking his hands off the wheel. I think we are about to see a nationwide public display of road rage.

TDM

When we first moved to California from Michigan, we were very curious about earthquakes. One day my wife felt a tremor and was sure she had experienced our first quake. She gathered our three daughters and said: “Did you feel that?  I think that might have been an earthquake.” A few minutes later, it happened again. Then my oldest daughter, who was about 12, said: “Mom, do you think that might be the spin cycle on the washing machine?” We have been laughing about that ever since.

Lately, things have been so weird that I wonder if we might all be living through the modern version of that spin cycle. On December 29, 2016, the Obama administration publicized an intelligence report concluding that Russia had interfered with the 2016 election to help Donald Trump. President Obama ordered sweeping new sanctions and expelled 35 Russians. We now know that this was total nonsense. It is far from clear that Russia had anything to do with the Wikileaks disclosure of DNC emails. We definitely know that Russia was not colluding with the Donald Trump campaign. We also know that they were colluding with the Hillary Clinton campaign to stop Donald Trump. The Obama administration knew this too but launched this insane attach on Russia anyway in an obvious attempt to delegitimize the Trump administration from day one.

Now, four years later, the DNI announced that China interfered with our election to benefit Joe Biden.  Last Friday the Trump administration issued last minute sanctions on Iran, China, and Cuba. Just wait for the MSM to complain that Trump was acting irresponsibly. Few of them will even notice the irony. One could say that history is repeating itself, except that this time Trump actually has evidence to support this decision.

Everything we see right now is beyond bizarre. There is so much information that is so contradictory that the truth is more than a little illusive. What we do know is this, the Democratic Party and the MSM continues to lie to us. Somethings never change.

They are trying to pretend that anyone who questions the 2020 election is guilty of a crime. In 2016, it was Russia, this year it is all of us. Yet contrary to reports in the MSM the evidence supporting election fraud is all too real and substantial. Perhaps the most obvious evidence is that no one, in either party, is even pretending that Joe Biden really won a landslide election. Even Democrats are not talking about Joe Biden, they are still focused entirely on Donald Trump.

Our nation’s Capital has been turned into an armed fortress. Why? There are even reports that National Guard troops are being vetted to be sure they are not planning on interfering with the inauguration. There are more troops in Washington D.C. than in Afghanistan. One local resident, when asked about this, said “if you need 20,000 troops to guard you during your inauguration you weren’t elected by the people.” (This is not the actual quote, that was more colorful and profane.)

Do they really fear a well-coordinated armed insurrection? At worst, the incident at the Capital last week involved about 100 people. Most of whom qualify as nut jobs and seemed more focused on photo ops than insurrection. In addition, contrary to claims in the MSM, there is evidence that at least some Antifa/BLM activists were involved and a Boogaloo Boi leader is even bragging about it.

In addition, Democrats, and their supporters in the MSM are trying to silence Donald Trump by blocking him from Twitter, Facebook Google, Amazon, Apple and anywhere else. They are also threatening to block anyone who agrees with him regarding the obvious problems with the 2020 election. Apparently questioning the results of the 2020 election is tantamount to treason. Questioning the results in 2016 was patriotism.

They are even demanding expulsion from congress of anyone who dared object to the results of the election. That would be more impressive if they hadn’t ignored the Democrats who did the same thing previously, only without even a hint of evidence. Some are even demanding that news outlets like OAN and Newsmax, and Fox News be banned, to avoid spreading misinformation. This is absurd. It is also dangerous.

In response to the very real crisis facing this country, Joe Biden has apparently decided that the number one issue is transgender rights. Here is the Breitbart report on this.  This is also reported in numerous other places:

Joe Biden Day 1: Order on Transgender Rights in Sports and Bathrooms (breitbart.com)

His website apparently promises the following:

On his first day in office, Biden will reinstate the Obama-Biden guidance revoked by the Trump-Pence Administration, which will restore transgender students’ access to sports, bathrooms, and locker rooms in accordance with their gender identity. He will direct his Department of Education to vigorously enforce and investigate violations of transgender students’ civil rights.

Wow, with this kind of brilliant leadership just imagine what is possible.

Oh, by the way, he apparently intends to make masks mandatory, nationwide, even when indoors with family. Meanwhile Democrats have impeached Donald Trump for inciting a riot that started before he finished speaking and which was planned in advance. Even CNN admitted that, but all the Democrats in the House and ten idiotic Republicans voted to impeach him anyway. What makes this even worse is that it has no chance of removing Trump from office even five minutes early.

This is unlikely to end well, for any of us. With this type of leadership, the Democratic dreams of happy days being here again are about as realistic as thinking the spin cycle on a washing machine is an earthquake.

TDM

For the record, I own an insurance agency and we love taking business away from GEICO. So, this is hardly an endorsement of GEICO Insurance. But they do have some great commercials. One of my favorites is where this group of young people are running in terror from a haunted house. One of the girls suggests they jump a running car and drive away, but the rest of the group says NO! Let’s hide in the garage behind all the hanging chain saws.  Here is a link to a YouTube version of that commercial:

geico commercial chainsaws – – Video Search Results (yahoo.com)

It is one thing to be incredibly stupid during a commercial obviously designed as a joke. It is something else when an equally stupid decision is made by a member of Congress during a real crisis. Alexander Ocasio-Cortez revealed that during the Capitol riots, she did not go a secure location where members of congress were locked down, guarded by Capitol police, because she though the “White Supremacist” sympathizing reps in congress might have revealed her location so she could be killed or kidnapped.

In her interview with Rachel Maddow, who incredibly either believed this nonsense or showed incredible skill at not laughing out loud, AOC, said she literally did not know if she would make it to the end of the day. During this time of crisis, she chose to shelter in place in the equivalent of the garage with the hanging chainsaws. She said that sheltering in an “insecure location” during the riot at the U.S. Capitol, “seemed like a safer bet” than sheltering in the “secure location” with other members of congress who sympathize with “white supremacists.”

Why did she feel this way? “They’ve made public comments that are closely aligned with the beliefs of white supremacists and white supremacist sympathizer organizations, and these are all public record.” She did not actually name any members of congress and did not actually provide any quotes. Rachel Maddow wondered if this was based on the fact that some members have previously shared QAnon content on social media.

Oh my. This is not just delusional; this is downright stupid. I frankly don’t know much about QAnon other than the fact that the bare-chested idiot carrying the spear and wearing horns is apparently associated with QAnon. He is a lot of things, but a threat to assassinate everyone in congress is more than a reach.

Sharing an article, that looks interesting, is hardly the same as supporting White Supremacy. In addition, I suspect the remarks about Muslim-Americans in congress was probably aimed at Ilhan Omar, who has a lot more problems than just being a Muslim-American, such as praising ISIS.

AOC deliberately avoided a place designed to be safe because of alleged white supremacy views held by Republican members of congress, not supported by any facts. Incredibly, Maddow then said AOC had a point because of tweets by Lauren Boebert. She accused Boebert of telling rioters where to find Nancy Pelosi.

Here what Boebert tweeted. Before the riot started, she tweeted: “Today is 1776.” This was interpreted as coordinating with the rioters. Then she tweeted” We were locked in the House Chambers.” Then later: “The Speaker has been removed from the chambers.” It was admittedly dumb for Boebert to be tweeting while this was going on, but hardly evidence of treason.

This makes the kids in the GEICO commercial  look brilliant in comparison. The problem is that AOC is a member of congress and there are lot of other Democratic members of congress who appear to use the same reasoning. When you see this in a commercial, it is humorous. When you see this type of logic used by members of congress to justify impeaching a President of the United States, it is dangerously delusional.

Once again, I remind people that this is typical of how a lot of Democrats make decisions. It is indeed scary. It is hard to imagine people this delusional making good decisions about anything. The good news is that they are destined to muck things up so fast that the clock is already ticking on the length of time they will be in power.

But at least they will be secure, in a safe hiding place, protected by hanging chainsaws conveniently provided by a maniacal serial killer. What could possibly go wrong?

TDM

On January 1, 2021, Twitter stock was selling at about $55.00. Today, after the idiotic decision to block Donald Trump, permanently, Twitter closed today at $45.79.  That means Twitter has lost over 16% of its value since the first of the year. That is billions of dollars. Facebook lost even more.

The stockholders, many of whom could care less about the political views of Jack Dorsey or Mark Zuckerberg, are undoubtedly furious about this. If they don’t see this trend reverse, like right now, they will stop buying Twitter stock and may start dumping it. They didn’t buy stock because they liked the politics of the executives, they bought it to make money. Jack Dorsey may believe that he is all powerful, but that is not true. He, like every other executive of a publicly held corporation, reports to the Board of Directors that reports to the stockholders.

Even if the stock recovers, which is far from certain, there are certain to be class action lawsuits against Twitter and Facebook’s Board of Directors. That always happens when a lot of people lose big bucks.  Having been the Risk Manager for a large publicly held organization, I had direct contact with the Board of Directors. They all had several things in common. They didn’t get there by accident and they were very anxious to preserve their own wealth. They were also terrified of stockholder’s lawsuits, since they knew they could be sued personally. My guess is that the Board of Directors for both Twitter and Facebook are very aware of what is happening, and they are beyond concerned. This will be magnified by the fact that they likely own large amounts of stock and have lucrative stock options. I doubt that many of them are finding this amusing.

I used to brief the Board of Directors annually regarding Board of Director insurance including the amount of coverage available to protect the Board Members distinct and above the protection provided to stockholders. They paid very close attention to these briefing and had a lot of questions. They are normally very supportive of the CEO, until they are not supportive. Nothing will change things more quickly than a rapid drop in equity, particularly when that is done by an arbitrary decision made by senior management. Ultimately, every board wants and demands the same thing. Make a profit and keep the value of the stock rising. Do that, and they can forgive a lot. Fail to do that and they can and will act.

A lot of those board members realize that whether you like Trump or not, if he goes, a lot of his 72 million followers go with him. Worse than that, a lot of people who don’t even follow Trump, but follow other people with conservative views, will leave too. This is already happening. Within days, if not hours, this trend may become irreversible. In the meantime, how many people do you expect to follow Joe Biden on Twitter or Facebook. Exactly!

We will soon know. Perhaps the Twitter and Facebook Boards will be more than willing to go along on the ride down, shedding billions of dollars in the process. Anyone want to bet on that? Warm fuzzy politically correct feelings are great, but they are not an acceptable substitute for cold hard cash. If I were on the Board of Twitter or Facebook, I would be demanding answers. Some Board Members are probably already demanding that this policy be reversed immediately, and that Donald Trump is provided with a strong incentive to stay with the program. It will take a lot more than an apology. Trump doesn’t need them, they need Trump.

There are already a lot of very powerful people, with enormous resources, more than willing to handle the baggage that always accompany someone like Donald Trump in exchange for a couple $billion. In this case closer to $50 billion.

Unless this trend changes, this won’t take long.  This is true even if the accusations against Donald Trump have merit. But it is becoming increasingly obvious that they don’t have merit. Just imagine if this weekend and next week becomes extremely violent. It will be hard to blame that on Trump because he has given strong statements against violence, that even the MSM appreciated. Joe Biden, on the other hand, poured gas on the flames. It is one thing to be arrogant, it is something else to be arrogant and wrong. Imagine this phone call. “Nailed that one Jack! Way to go Mark! How are you going get my $51 billion back?”

Even Andrew Cuomo is talking about opening the state back up. Why? Because he has changed his opinion? No. It is because he desperately needs to stop the bleeding. Even Andrew has figured out that paying people more money to stay home and not work is a recipe for financial disaster. If you can make money for not working, why bother to work? This should already be obvious, but then we are talking about people who are very skilled at believing things that are demonstrably false. Ultimately, no matter what one believes, if you run out of money you run out of money. Pride goeth before a fall, but lack of money speeds up the process.

Trump is releasing the Russian conspiracy hoax documents. At least one of the people arrested in connection with the Capitol invasion is a well-known BLM agitator. Another guy, captured on video carrying a huge confederate flag, appears to be a liberal Democrat. There are rumors that the Acting Attorney General will appoint a Special Prosecutor to investigate Hunter and Joe Biden. Trump is rumored to be ordering a full audit of the Georgia runoff election. Remember, that the DNI is still required to give a report on foreign interference in the election. This could be a wild weekend for a lot of reasons. In the meantime, a lot of people busy celebrating would be wise to remember that all that Twitters is not Gold.

TDM