If you live in California, the skies are filled with smoke. At last count there are about 370 wildfires raging. Governor Gavin Newsom considers this, as expected, proof of global warming. He apparently missed the part about breaking records set in 1913, long before the dreaded creep of CO2 in our environment. This time it is the Independent Service Operator, ISO, shutting down power. Previously, PG&E shut down power to stop wildfires, but this time power was shut down because California was running out of power. It is such a pleasure to get your electricity cut off when it is about 110 degrees out. Air conditioning is so over-rated. Odds are astronomical that Newsom will propose adding solar and wind power, guaranteed to be inadequate, while banning fracking because who needs natural gas-powered power plants anyway? It is so much better for the environment if we buy electricity at exorbitant rates from coal-fueled plants located in less enlightened states.

But the real smoke is coming from the DNC. This morning one of the local news anchors described Biden’s speech as mostly accurate. He missed the part where Biden, like most of the Media, deliberately distorted what Trump actually said in Charlottesville. Sometimes the facts are just too inconvenient. I also have some doubt that Biden was speaking live. If you think about it, no one was in the audience. Even the news crews were not in the audience. He was talking to an empty screen. Everyone was watching a “live stream” of the speech. It would have been easy to tape this earlier, perhaps with multiple takes. That would reduce the risk of, well, Biden being Biden. It is hard if not impossible to compare the Biden we saw last night to the Bumbling Biden we have come to adore.

However, the real problem for the DNC is that all its speakers were spewing hate speech filled with lies and distortions. That plays well on CNN; they were standing up and applauding. It may even have played well in certain households where Donald Trump is considered the spawn of Satan. The RNC now has several days to prepare a rebuttal and it is likely to be devastating. There are already reports that most of the speakers at the RNC will be live, in front of a real audience. They may be social distancing and wearing masks, but they will be there, and it will obviously be live. The speakers will also come armed with facts. Sometimes the trial doesn’t really begin until opposing counsel has a chance to cross examine witnesses. Anyone can get away with lying if no one does any serious fact checking.

The entire DNC show was a smoke screen. Even the fake audiences were on zoom screens. In the case of Kamala Harris, the staff was too excited to realize they were showing the same people in several difference boxes. Then Kamala waved enthusiastically to people who clearly couldn’t see her.  It was pathetic. The convention ended with the Bidens and the Harris’s social distancing, wearing masks, watching fireworks in front of a half empty parking lot with cars using their emergency flashers. Thank you, COVID.

In addition, there was almost no reporting on the real convention, where far left radicals tried to verbally nudge each other even further left. When people learn about what these geniuses have in store for the rest of us, it is not going to play well in Peoria or anywhere else.

The RNC convention has close to a week to prepare. They will learn from the DNC mistakes. They will also develop a world class rebuttal. Donald Trump will speak live, every day. He may also bring some surprises. But the biggest contrast will be with the Republican speakers. Few of them will bother with hate speech. One doesn’t need people to hate Biden, it is only necessary to point out the obvious: that he is not up to the job and let him retire gracefully. But a bigger problem is that the real Donald Trump will be more than obvious, and the mythical monster created by the DNC and their supporters in the MSM will fade into oblivion. Love him or hate him, Donald J. Trump is very real, indeed.

Most candidate get a bump from their convention. So far, it is Trump who has been getting a bump from the DNC convention. Some people will naively think that the “live” speech by Biden will put the senility issue to rest. It will, for those who desperately need to believe that. But for other people, they saw a very old man, standing in one place, reading a teleprompter and occasionally moving his hands. The contrast between that and Donald Trump, who fills any stage with his soaring personality, will be beyond obvious. There is a reason Donald Trump was a media star of Celebrity Apprentice. There is a reason those managing Joe Biden are keeping him hidden in his basement.

Biden’s performance reminded me of Punxsutawney Phil, the ground hog trotted out on Ground Hog day in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, to look for his shadow. This supposedly predicts when winter will end. But, in reality, after the show Punxsutawney Phil just goes back to sleep, because that is what ground hogs do when it’s cold outside.

TDM

A Fox News correspondent interviewed people on the streets of New York. He asked them about the DNC convention, Joe Biden, and Donald Trump. After watching this for about two seconds, I knew what they were going to say before they were asked any questions. It was amazingly simple. If you had someone walking outside, on the largely deserted streets of New York, not near anyone, wearing a face mask, they loved the DNC, they hated Donald Trump and they said they would probably vote for Biden. If the person wasn’t wearing a mask, because wearing a mask outdoors when you are not near anyone is stupid, they hated the DNC, laughed at Biden, and supported Trump.

I also notice that most of the masks were a joke. My favorite is the fancy expensive masks, with vent holes, that defeat the purpose of the mask. In a close second is the cute cloth mask someone has been wearing for weeks, proud to be protecting humankind from disease. In many cases when these people talk, you can see the mask move in and out. That, of course, is evidence the mask is not working.

Anyone who has done five minutes of real research knows this. Surgical masks, worn in hospitals do a great job of screening out particles. But they must be changed about once every 15 minutes. After that they become contaminated and do more harm than good.

Some has heard about the n95 masks or perhaps the kn95 masks. They sound great, until you realize they are never intended to be worn repeatedly. You should change them every time to go someplace new or if you touch the mask. I did some research and these types of masks cost at least $2, if you buy in bulk. So, if you go shopping and you visit five stores, you probably need about $10 in masks. For these to work, you need a huge supply. They will protect you, but only for a while. They don’t protect anyone else. And, by the way, you are making it harder and more expensive for people who need these kinds of masks to get them. That is why Saint Fauci said not to wear a mask in the first place.

No one pretends cloth masks work. It is simple, if you can breathe through the mask, it doesn’t work. There has never been a study, anywhere, anytime, that showed that asking the entire population to wear masks has any impact on the spread of disease. There is a reason for that. Real doctors already know this doesn’t work. When this first started, Saint Fauci said that masks don’t work. So did the surgeon general of the United States. The science didn’t change, the only thing that changed was political pressure. So now people, who know better, are using non-existent science to encourage people to do things they know don’t work. Washing your hands works. So, does keeping away from other people. Avoid large crowds, avoid touching things that may be contaminated. If you need a mask, you shouldn’t be there. If you are sick stay home. The mask is the illusion of protection.

Now we have a candidate for President of the United States who wants to require everyone in the country to wear a mask every time they go outdoors.  Here’s the good news. Most of the COVID 19 mask Nazis understand that this is stupid.  If you to a store, you will see most people wearing a mask, but when they get out of the store, they quickly whip it off. Anyone wearing a mask, while driving alone in their car, should be given a psyche exam. Most people walking their dog in your neighborhood are not wearing a mask. Avoid those who are because they are either stupid or mentally unstable. They are almost certain to vote for Joe Biden.

The biggest lie is that we all should be terrified of COVID 19. If you are over 65 and have underlying conditions, like a heart condition, there is reason for concern. But for most people COVID 19 doesn’t even make them very sick. There are exceptions. There are always exceptions. Most people love peanuts. Peanuts taste great and they are very safe. But, if you are allergic to peanuts, they can be deadly.  The solution to this is to train people who are allergic to peanuts to avoid them, it is not to stop selling peanuts. Everything has the potential to be a serious problem for somebody. But we can’t put everyone in a bubble trying to protect them from the world. That would just increase the risk for people allergic to bubbles.

History taught us this. Europeans have been getting contagious diseases for centuries. Sometimes these diseases killed a lot of people. But they did something else. People exposed to these diseases developed some level of immunity. Sometimes this prevented them even getting the disease. If they did get the disease, their bodies would recognize it and fight back. To most Europeans, measles is a two-week inconvenience. But American Indians, who were social distanced from the world, had never been exposed to the measles. When they got the measles, it could wipe out the entire tribe.

That begs the question. Was the solution to this to permanently isolate native Americans from the world? Some would say yes, but those would be people who despise civilization itself. Most of us grew up before there was a vaccine for measles. Our mothers knew what to do. When they learned about someone your age that had the measles, they would take you over to visit. They wanted you to get the measles. That is because they knew if you got the measles when you were eight, you didn’t have to worry about it when you were 38. But if you never had the measles as a child and you got them as an adult, that could be a serious problem.

Bingo. Those moms got it right. Sometimes, letting a disease spread among people who don’t get very sick protects everyone. You only isolate those people who are at high risk. The sooner the disease spreads among everyone else, the sooner it goes away. This has happened many times throughout world history. Even the worst plagues don’t last forever. Eventually, these diseases run out of potential victims and they die. We just need to distinguish between a disease that is extremely lethal and one that isn’t. Vaccinate against polio, but not necessarily every disease on the planet. If you are under age 40, COVID 19 is not very lethal. Over 99% of people in this age group recover with no long-term effects. If you are under 20, odds are very high you won’t even get sick. And guess what, if you don’t get very sick, you are unlikely to spread it. Oh, we have all seen the commercials where it says even if you aren’t sick you can spread it to grandma. That is true, if you are getting drunk at a pool party on spring break. Walking down the street, not breathing down other people’s necks, not so much. Even the loudest voices on TV preaching this nonsense know it is nonsense. That is why Chris Cuomo, who had tested positive for COVID 19 and claimed to have severe symptoms while hiding in his basement, was caught out in public without a mask. He then got into a screaming match with a neighbor who pointed this out.

I firmly believe that most of the things we have done to slow down or stop the spread of COVID 19 have made it worse. They have certainly destroyed our economy and ruined many small business owners. We should have isolated our nursing homes, reminded people to wash their hands and advised people to stay home if they are sick.  When someone did get COVID 19, we should have isolated them until they were no longer a risk. We did that with cruise ship passengers, and it worked brilliantly. But the truth is COVID 19 is contagious, it was always going to spread and that was going to continue until it ran out of victims.  A vaccine sounds great, until you realize it is impossible to really test these vaccines in a short period of time. For at least some people, the vaccine may be more dangerous than the disease. And sometimes we don’t learn the real side effects of something like a vaccine for years. That is why you see all those TV commercials featuring lawyers who are suing drug companies because of the alleged harm done by drugs previously considered safe.

Perhaps we can all learn from a headstone in the Boot Hill Cemetery, Tombstone Arizona:  “Here lies Lester Moore. Four slugs from a 44, no Les, no more.” No one knows who is buried there. There is no record of a Lester Moore getting killed in Tombstone, although legends have been created about this. But there is still truth here. Sometimes, less is more.

TDM

Today on Fox News, Brett Hume expressed surprise that recent polls show people are not all that concerned about the rioting and violence. He thought people would be more upset about this. I like Brett Hume, but he missed the obvious. People are upset about the rioting and violence. That is one reason why gun sales are skyrocketing. People who were for gun control last year are out trying to purchase a Glock this year. I know a lot of people, both liberal and conservative. I don’t know anyone who is not concerned about the riots and violence. They may differ on every other issue, but all agree that safety is a big deal. The real lesson here is that the polls themselves are worthless. If they missed this, they are missing EVERYTHING.

This is why it looks like a senile 77-year-old man proposing wildly radical ideas is supposedly leading in the polls. If you never talk to anyone with half a brain, you are always going to get similar results. Smart people don’t talk to pollsters, ever. In fact, more and more people don’t talk to anyone on their phones. Check this out yourself. While you are out, look for people talking on their cell phone. For every one of them you find, you will find about 5 who are texting. Do you really think these people are likely to spend 15 or more minutes talking on the phone to someone taking a poll?

If the polls can’t figure out that no one, and I do mean no one, thinks these riots and violence are a good idea, they are missing everything. Instead, look at what is really happening. The business owners who are defying the lockdown by sneaking people in the backdoor. The people buying guns. The parents fuming because their vacation usually begins when the kids are back in school. The people lined up for hours in 115-degree temperature to hear Trump speak in Yuma Arizona. The MAGA hats. The drop off in fans watching MLB or any other sport because of people sitting for the national anthem. The speed at which Goodyear apologized for a training session that allowed a Black Lives Matter hat but not a MAGA hat. One word from Trump and Goodyear folded like a cheap umbrella. Or how about the boycott against GOYA foods that resulted in an immediate surge in sales.

Have you notice how many rip off their face mask as soon as they leave a store. Do you really think those people will vote for someone who wants them to wear a face mask every time they leave their home?  Or how about people in California who were told they were going to lose power while the outside temperature was 110 degrees. This was so obvious our resident idiot, Governor Newsom, ordered an investigation and said his administration would soon lay out detailed terms on how to avoid a power failure.

The following news article explains.  Note the last two paragraphs: Newsom emphasized that the state remains “committed to radically changing the way we produce and consume energy,” moving away from fossil fuels toward solar and wind.

He said, however, that “we cannot sacrifice reliability as we move forward in this transition.”

The point is that all this “Green New Deal” and global warming alarmist nonsense quickly fades into the background if you can’t run your air conditioner when it is 110 degrees outside.

In summary, if you are running a poll, and you miss things this obvious, there is no reason to take anything you say or report seriously. If fact, we are close to the Gomer Pyle dilemma. You know, the scene where Sergeant Carter and Gomer are trapped in a room with a ticking bomb. There are only seconds left to avoid disaster. Carter knows he must cut either the red wire or the black wire. He asks Gomer which wire he would cut. Gomer thinks about it and say the red wire. So, Sergeant Carter immediately cuts the black wire. Gomer said: “why did you ask my opinion and then ignore me? The response was: “The only thing knew for sure was that you would be wrong.”

If the polls say it, do more than question it. Odds are high the opposite is true.

TDM

The DNC Convention started last night. I haven’t been this excited since my first root canal. The odds of me watching any of this is rank right below the odds of me watching the SF Giants kneel for the national anthem. I suspect ratings will be sky high, for those who don’t matter. Even these folks are likely to end up searching desperately for something else to watch. By the time we get the Joe and Kamala show on Thursday, half the country will have been cured of insomnia.

This is easy to predict. Joe Biden will be barely visible. Perhaps a short video clip, but even Thursday night he will show up virtually reading a teleprompter. Few are looking forward to it, which is why the DNC is promoting all the other speakers like Bernie, Benedict Kasich, Obama, and a cast of thousands. Anyone but Joe. No one could survive two hours of Joe. This won’t be the DNC Convention, it will be the EBC Convention, Everybody But (Joe) Convention.

Donald Trump, on the other hand, will speak on every night of the RNC Convention. He will draw more media attention for his appearances than all the other speakers combined. Trump doesn’t need anyone else. While there will be some nice speeches from Republican conservatives, everyone knows that Trump is the main event. Even those who hate him will be glued to their televisions, desperately hoping for a monster mistake. They are secretly, or not so secretly, hoping whatever killed his brother is contagious. Whether you love Trump or hate Trump, you can’t take your eyes off him.

You can’t beat somebody with nobody. Joe Biden is not nobody, he is less than nobody. Nobody always has the potential to become somebody. Joe Biden is a been there, done nothing, no longer capable of even pretending. If someone talks about being inspired by Joe Biden, they should immediately be given a drug test.

Biden will get a bump out of the convention, whether he gets a bump or not. The MSM will crown him the new Messiah but even they won’t believe it. Then, Trump will take the stage next week and Biden will quietly slip back into oblivion. Odds are high he will watch, or not watch, the RNC Convention from his basement. Kamala Harris will be reading up on the 25^th Amendment in case Joe accidentally gets elected. Her loyalty to Biden consists primarily of dreaming about giving the eulogy at his funeral.

If, and that is a big if, Joe does get elected, the push to replace him won’t begin in four years. It won’t even begin in three years or two years, or one year. The push to replace him will start before he even gets inaugurated.  You didn’t really think any of them believe Biden is capable of being President, did you? That would be conventional wisdom, but it would be far from reality.

TDM

Democrats seem to have trouble grasping the obvious. Men are different than women. If you find a body, badly decayed, with little hope of identification even with DNA, the pathologist will still tell you whether this is a male or female. This is because the differences are, gasp, obvious. Except to a Democrat. To a Democrat you can’t really identify the sex of someone until you know how they feel. Feelings trump physical anatomy.

They then use this superbly idiotic assumption to make patently ridiculous policy decisions. Boys, who pretend to be girls, can now compete against girls in sporting events. By total coincidence, these biological males are winning a lot of races. If this continues, there will eventually be no women’s sports. One would think that even liberal women would find this to be a problem. We can be sure at least some of them think this is absurd.

Now, these clowns want to take on the mail man, who may be a woman. California has already decided to go totally vote by mail. That sounds great, to a liberal, but it is a recipe for voter fraud. One problem is that the California voter registration files are an absolute mess. It was only recently that anyone tried to reconcile these with national databases. When that was done it in LA County alone, they found 1,500,000 people registered to vote who had to be removed because there was no evidence they were eligible to vote. Some of them were dead. Some had moved. Many of them had not voted in years, raising questions regarding their actual existence. Yet, under the current plan, all of them get a ballot.

Then, people are visited by very helpful people from the DNC to help them cast their vote. This is called vote harvesting and it is patently illegal in most states. But in California, the DNC literally bragged about it. For years elections in California were highly suspect. No one checks anything.  They don’t ask for ID. They don’t ask for a voter registration card. They just ask your name and address and you sign. No one ever checks the signature. Even if they did check drivers’ licenses in California, it wouldn’t matter because they weren’t real IDs. A real ID included verifying you exist, and you are here legally. Millions of people in California had to get a new driver’s license, in case they wanted to fly on a commercial airline someplace.

Some naïve people have suggested this would be a recipe for voter fraud. Obviously, other than the 1.5 million people who shouldn’t have been registered and the inconvenient fact that some California counties reported more votes than live registered voters, there is zero evidence of voter fraud. I mean has anyone ever suspected voter fraud in major metropolitan areas run by Democrats? Of course not. That would be unthinkable. Just because Democrats get a higher percentage of the vote in Manhattan than Putin gets is Moscow is no reason to be suspicious.

We should all demand mail in voting, now, all over the country. That would relieve a lot of stress, because we would no longer have to wait for election day to learn the results.  The chances of a Republican winning an election to a national office would be less than the chance of a Republican being the next Mayor of Los Angeles. With mail in voting, the entire country could enjoy the freedom and prosperity of LA, minus the weather.

Anyone know a good relocation expert with offices in Belize?

TDM

You couldn’t write a Hollywood script this bad. Democrats believed that they could easily defeat Donald Trump. They assembled a dream team to compete for the nomination. It started to look a lot like an American Idol audition. Joe Biden was included almost as an afterthought. No one considered Joe Biden to be a great candidate, he was just viewed as a less risky option.  It was the none of the above option.

All the other candidates self-destructed. The flavor of the week always turned sour overnight as soon as people listened to what they were saying. The pattern became obvious. Someone appears to have momentum. They become the overnight media sensation. Then voters took a real look at them and say: “seriously?” Each of the candidates quickly evaporated. No one started higher than Kamala Harris, no one crashed sooner.

Suddenly, the DNC realized they were running out of time. They were looking at a brokered convention. The leading candidate was Bernie Sanders who is so far left even liberal democrats feared he could conceivably lose all 50 states.

Something had to be done. Then Joe Biden finally won something, the South Carolina primary. Suddenly all the remaining candidates dropped out giving Joe the clear path to victory. We may never know what promises were required to achieve that outcome, but we can be sure they were BIG promises.. When it finally came down to Joe and Bernie, the never Bernie crowd won the day. Joe Biden is your big winner.

Biden, who had stumbled badly in debates, went into hiding. He was literally hiding out in his basement. When he did surface, he was wearing a mask, with a carefully written script, and a staff determined to avoid questions. Joe still showed a miraculous talent for mucking thing up, but the media did not care.  He literally won because he was the last man standing, and he was barely standing. The media outlet for the DNC, just ignored Joe and focused solely on trashing Trump.

The search was on for a VP. Since very few think Joe is up to the job, this choice really matters. But the double secret society didn’t even pretend they were looking for the most qualified candidate. If that were the standard there would be no explanation for Joe Biden. Then a letter from 100 black leaders was publicly circulated demanding that the VP nomination be given to a black female.  This put Joe between a rock and a hard place. If he didn’t choose a black female, these same people promised to campaign against Joe. Historically black Americans vote about 90% for Democrats. Democrats count on that in every election. When Joe said if you weren’t voting for him you weren’t black, he was telling what he believed to be true. If Joe can’t get 90% of the black voter, he loses, pure and simple.

The problem is that all the black female candidates came with more baggage than the United Terminal at O’Hare after a major snowstorm. The choices ranked from bad, to awful, to terrible, to “are you kidding me?” Ultimately the only choice was Kamala Harris because all the other candidates were so much worse.

But even Kamala knows this was an insult. She knows she was chosen SOLELY because of her race and gender. Not only that, it still took Joe forever to accept her. Now when you are the only girl left at the dance, and the last guy has to make a choice and he sees you sitting there all alone and still hesitates, well that is not a good sign.

So, the DNC is going with the worst possible choice for President who just picked the worst possible choice for VP. Neither won anything, other than surviving while everyone around them self-destructed.

The DNC thinks this ticket will beat Donald Trump. They don’t think the massive crowds he can draw at a moments notice are important. They ignore MAGA hats. They rely on polls that have been wrong on every major election during the 21 Century. They believe because they believe everyone else thinks just like them. This is where they missed something monumental. They don’t think and all and all those people they are putting down understand that. Real people feel zero obligation to agree with people who are not just wrong, they are misinformed and stupid.

Unless Democrats steal this election with mail in voting, the DNC ticket is on the railway to destruction.

TDM

I have always believed that the COVID 19 virus was used as an excuse by the establishment and Democrats to seize power. Many governors enjoyed putting restrictions on everything we do. They reveled in the power. This was intended to cause serious problems in the hope that this would help defeat Donald Trump. It is, of course, unthinkable to wish this level of pain on people for political purposes, but that does not mean it is not true.

I believe when this is all done, there will be an audit that will find the following.

1. The number of cases is grossly overstated. We already know this because people are testing positive one day and negative the next.  Most recent case was the Ohio governor. Another example was Matthew Stafford, QB for the Detroit Lions.
2. The number of deaths is grossly understated.  I personally know of people who had relatives who died, from causes unrelated to COVID 19, that were reported as COVID 19 deaths.
3. There will be no evidence that the general population wearing a mask had any impact on slowing the spread of the disease.
4. There will be no evidence that locking down large parts of the economy had any impact on slowing the disease. It clearly spread anyway.
5. There will be clear evidence that shutting down some businesses, like hair salons, was not based on science, it was arbitrary, did not help prevent the spread of the disease, and destroyed people’s lives unnecessarily.

But the biggest impact of COVID 19 will be that a lot of people, and I do mean a lot, now realize they do not have to work in the office. This will impact New York City more than any place else. New York only has 1% of the U.S. area but 8% of the GDP. At recently as January of this year, if you wanted to be a player in the financial world, you had to work in New York City. But that has changed dramatically during the last six months. Now a high percentage of people who work in New York City are still working, but they are working from home. Many of them have figured out something major. If they can work out of an apartment on the lower east side, they can work anywhere. They do not need to live in New York City to work there anymore. They do not have to pay the high taxes. They do not have to pay the high rent. They do not have to put up with the noise and the traffic. They do not have to put up with the filth and the crime. They do not even have to put up with the weather. They don’t even need to live within commuting distance.

There are already numerous reports of people deserting New York City. This is so bad that Governor Cuomo noted and offered to serve them a drink. Good luck with that. The same thing is happening here in California. Housing prices in South Lake Tahoe are skyrocketing because people are deserting San Francisco, for the same reason. They aren’t just deserting San Francisco; they are deserting the suburbs. People who don’t want to live in San Francisco, don’t want to commute there either. Covid 19 has taught them something huge. They don’t have to be here anymore.

When you combine that with the skyrocketing homeless crisis, the rapid increase in crime and insane regulations, the problem becomes worse.

We have all seen this before. A town, located on Route 66 prospered, because everyone had to slow down to drive through there. But once an interstate highway was built the town was reduced to an exit sign on the interstate. Those towns still exist, barely, but the economic boom is long gone. We recently drove through such a town. There were pathetic, faded signs, reminding people of the Route 66 glory days. But those days are gone forever. The same thing happened to towns built around the railroad. Now, we don’t even need roads. We don’t have to travel at all. We just need a reliable connection to the internet.

New York will never recover.  Neither will a place like San Francisco. It will be years, perhaps decades, before this changes. It will be that long before people say: hmm…that is a nice place to live. In the meantime, the people who caused all this will, predictably, be the last to figure it out. Democratic Governors and Mayors in blue states have thrived by mismanaging high density population centers. But the rich people, the ones with big jobs, the ones who fund everything, are leaving. Soon they will be managing a nightmare. The income stream will be long gone, the overcrowded poor, most of whom will be dependents, will stay behind. The homeless population will increase.

This has happened to New York before. It always found a way to adjust. But this time, that may not be possible. Previously, no matter how bad it got, people still “needed” to be in New York. New York remained the financial capital of the country. That is no longer true. New York was nice, while it lasted, but it is rapidly becoming so yesterday. Things that previously required a physical presence in New York can now be done from a tent with a generator and a good antenna.

The law of unintended consequences is in full play. COVID 19, was great at giving Democrats the illusion of control. But ultimately it may have just speeded up a death cycle that should have been obvious to anyone paying attention. Regardless of why, one thing is clear. A whole lot of people have already left, and others are prepared to exit stage right.

TDM

Most people have learned about the real risk of having a hangover. In addition to the potential damage from drinking too much and embarrassing oneself, the morning after can be even worse. My favorite story about this concerned a very high-ranking insurance company officer, whose identity has been deleted to protect the obviously guilty. We were in New Orleans for a Risk and Insurance Managers Society Conference. Several of us decided to walk back from Bourbon street to our hotel, which was near the Superdome. On the way we passed a used car lot. There was a 1988 Dodge Charger there on prominent display. This business executive fell madly in love with the car. He went into the dealership, which was open all night. (That should have been a real clue folks). He bought that car on the spot and said he would pick it up later.

The next morning, I had breakfast with this guy. So, I asked him if his wife was excited about the new car. He said, “what car?” I said: “The 1988 Dodge Charger you bought last night.” Blank stare. Then: “I bought a car?” I said: “yes, a beautiful 1988 Dodge Charger. “ Blank stare. Then: “how did I pay for it?” I said: “You wrote out a check.” He started to swear, then asked us to excuse him while he called his bank and transferred the money necessary to prevent the check from bouncing. I later learned that he had the car shipped to Seattle, only to discover that like a lot of things, it looked a lot better when the person checking it out was drunk. He sold it at a big loss.

I knew he had been drinking but had no idea he was that hammered. At first, I thought he was joking, but eventually realized he did buy a car and didn’t remember it.

The entire country is going to have a COVID 19 hangover. Only this will be a lot more serious and expensive than buying a dumb car. When you combine this with the insane reaction to the George Floyd incident, it is a perfect storm. Let me give one example, the San Francisco Giants. They were already in trouble. The team has stunk up the field for the last five years attendance is way down. Last year there were more SF Giants representatives trying to scalp tickets than the real ticket scalpers. In my case one of these smiling young geniuses tried to see me tickets, next to my tickets, for about half of what I paid for my seats. When I point out that as a season ticket holder, I found this to be offensive, they quickly moved on to the next target of opportunity. At the end of the year, I decided, for the first time in 25 years, not to renew my season tickets. I could handle the lousy teams, but previously when I couldn’t go to a game, I could sell my tickets for face value and often a surcharge. Last year I was lucky to get 50 cents on the dollar.

That turned out to be brilliant timing because the baseball season was cancelled. I believe the Giants are still trying to figure out what refund, if any, to give to current season ticket holders. If I still had those tickets I would be beyond furious.

Now they are playing games in front of empty stadiums with cutout figures sitting in seats in key locations, like behind home plate, to create the illusion of an audience. They are even piping in game noise. All the players have masks, and they must wear them unless they are playing the field or batting. This is even though they are playing in an empty stadium surrounded by people who are tested on a regular basis. People, who if they do get sick, tend to recover before they get all the way to first base. Yet the players are whimpering about not feeling safe. It is beyond pathetic.

But it gets worse than that. The new Giants manager considers himself a social justice warrior, so he knelt while the national anthem was played to nobody. One of the star players stood next to him, with his hand on his shoulder, to show support. I turned off the TV and wrote a letter to senior management at the SF Giants thanking them, as a Vietnam combat vet, for their kind consideration.

George Floyd, the symbol of systemic racism, was a sad situation but not actually racist. He was drunk literally out of his mind on Alcohol, meth amphetamines and heroin. He had serious underlying health conditions and may have died without or without any police being in the area. He was arrested because he was acting weird and was asleep at the wheel of his car. The video shows the police tried to treat him with respect until he became agitated and they had to resort to physical force to restrain him. While one may criticize the police for the way they handled this, there is nothing about this incident that indicates this happened because George Floyd was black. If you doubt that, take this test. Go get tanked up. Fall asleep in your car. Then when police arrive to question you, start swinging at them. See how they respond. The only difference is that if you are white, and the police rough you up, no one will care.

Major businesses are making similar mistakes. Trader Joe’s is changing its name to “Trader”. (“Say it ain’t so, Joe!”) The NBA is painting black lives murals on the floors. The Boston Red Sox just hung a “Black Live Matter” banner on the Green Monster. A Nascar driver freaked out over a garage pull that has been used in racing garages for decades. CNN accepted this as further evidence of systemic racism. The NBA would sell you a shirt that said, “Kill Cops” but not one that said, “Free Hong Kong.” The NFL is re-introducing Colin Kaepernick and there are already organized attempts to disrespect our flag at every opportunity. Some even want to play the black national anthem, unknown even to most African Americans, before every game. “God Bless America” will be replaced by John Lennon’s “Imagine.”

This is insane. So far as I can tell, the only sport that has not become totally anti-American is the National Hockey League, which is populated by a ton of Canadians and has several Canadian teams.

So after losing more than a season because of irrational fear of a virus that isn’t actually very lethal, supposedly really smart people are doubling down on disaster by apologizing for their white privilege and promising to accept responsibility for screwing everything up for everyone else. Frankly, some of these sports may not survive. At best it will take years, if not decades for them to recover. Businesses all over the country has already closed permanently, others will never reopen, and still more will reopen only to discover that they will pay a terrible price for trashing a high percentage of their customers. After COVID 19, no one wants to go anywhere just to be lectured about something else.

The bad news is that the hangover will be worse than anyone imagines. The good news is that this is one case where Darwinian theory works. Survival of the fittest is just as true in the commercial market as it is in nature. The old institutions, poorly run, fueled primarily by tradition, will never recover, but they will be replaced by something else. Something smarter, strong, more efficient and run by people too focused on making money to waste time insulting key customers.

The morning after will be something special.

TDM

We have all seen the recent polls showing Joe Biden leading by 15 points. If the election were held today, Bid would win in a landslide. Right? Do any of you really believe that? Do you believe that an overwhelming majority of Democrats will vote for a senile old man proposing far left ideas that are absolutely insane?  Odds are you do not believe that. You know too many Democrats, and while they may truly hate Donald Trump, I haven’t met anyone who was excited about Joe Biden. So, what is going on here?

The answer quite simply is that the polls are worthless. This is obsolete technology that hasn’t worked in decades. This is not just in the United States. In Britain, the anti-Brexit coalition was sure they had won. They were literally pouring champagne and celebrating. But the next day, when the true results, not exist polls, came in, Brexit won big. Remember all the times we heard that Boris Johnson was hanging on by the skin of his teeth. Well he just won in a historic landslide. The same thing happened here. Every poll thought Hillary would win. Every major network, including FOX, thought Hillary would win. That didn’t change until the actual votes were counted and Trump won Florida big league. He ended up running the table and picking up things along the edge, like Michigan and Wisconsin. None of the polls predicted this. Even the exit polls did not predict this.

Let’s be blunt. There any zero chance that any pollster will get me on the phone long enough to complete one of their silly surveys. I am not exactly alone. Many people no longer have land lines. Most of us have smart phones. Just watch people and observe how they use their smart phone. It is rare to see someone talking on the phone, outside of a business setting. Everyone else is typing madly with their thumbs.  I cannot imagine most of these people putting up with a robo-call phone survey that pops up on their smart phone.

In addition to that, as I have pointed out previously, the polls famously over-sample Democrats. That means even if the process were right the results would still be highly skewed. But the process isn’t right. It doesn’t come close to figuring out how people really think. Polling is just so yesterday.

A far better way to evaluate things is to watch what people do. When Democrats talk about defunding the police, the immediate result is an exponential increase in gun sales. When self-righteous Hollywood A’holes demanded a boycott of GOYA foods, sales went up. I personally know people, including myself, who went out of the way to buy a GOYA food product.

When Joe Biden speaks, there are about three people in the audience and most of them are DNC plants. When Trump speaks people line up for hours. People are wearing MAGA hats and Trump 2020 hats. Have you seen all those Biden 2020 hats? Me neither. In 2008 there were a lot of Obama bumper sticks. I can’t remember seeing the last Biden bumper sticker.

So, here’s the deal. None of the polls mean anything. They have less merit than the CDC COVID-19 statistics.  What does matter is whether Republicans running for re-election are running toward Trump or away from him. Four years ago, a lot of them were running away. Today only a couple are doing that, the rest are singing his praises. Republicans may not like Trump, but they absolutely despise Democrats. If you’re a Republican, even a Susan Collins type Republican you WANT Trump to campaign for you. Republicans are often slow on the intake, but they have figured this out. Trump is a winner and the people he supports do a lot better than the people he opposes.

This reminds me of a sanitation engineer in Chicago who figured out that Superbowl ratings were highly suspect. He determined the number of people watching the game by measuring the increase in sewage flow during half-time. He figured out that a high percentage of people watching the game would choose half-time to take a dump. We now know that he was right, and although no one publicly admits this, smart broadcasters pay more attention to their sh*t for exactly this reason.

So, when you see the polls showing Biden up by 15 points, remember one thing. Most people don’t participate in this nonsense and this is doing nothing more than giving CNN and the liberal left a false sense of security.

I seldom talk politics with a hard core liberal. The reason is very simple. They don’t listen and there is close to zero chance you can convince them of anything. If you do point out that they believe something demonstrably false, they will only become angry, at you, and write you off as an idiot. It is just not worth my time.

My primary concern at this point is massive voter fraud. I don’t think Joe Biden has a chance if there is a fair election process. But if everything is done by mail and Democrats are sorting the mail, then we have a serious problem. But then I realized something important. While there is no doubt Democrats would like to steal this election, it is far from certain that is possible. There will certainly be voter fraud in places like New York and California. But this election will not be decided in those states. In the states that really count, it will be far more difficult for Democrats to significantly alter results.

Everyone I know is angry. Even Democrats are angry. I believe Trump supporters are already lining up to vote in November. They are as energized as humanly possible. Democrats, on the other hand, are trying and failing to get enthusiastic for a senile old man who can’t even read a teleprompter without mucking things up. Throwing things at police, you betcha. Listening to Joe Biden? Seriously? He has zero personality. There is an old saying, “you can’t be somebody with nobody. Trump is somebody, Biden is nobody.”

In addition, the attempted coup by the Intelligence Agencies and the DOJ is about to go public. Durham is going to deliver his report and he is very likely to be indicting people. Even CNN will have to report on this. If he were going to sugar coat this or whitewash things, he would have already done that. Do not underestimate the impact of this.

Finally, remember that the MSM has no clue regarding how the average person not living in the DC bubble thinks about anything. For this reason, none of their reporting or projections has any merit. People living in a bubble cannot see outside the bubble. But people on the outside, looking in, have no problem seeing them. We got a picture of that tonight. I watched the Giants game, for about two seconds, until I realized the idiotic manager knelt during the national anthem while it was placed to an empty stadium. How stupid can you get? There were literally cut-outs of people put in seats behind home plate, so it looked like there were fans. The players were all wearing masks, although some took them off to play field. The stands were completely empty. It was insane. It was unwatchable. I can’t even imagine who thought this was a good idea.

The same thing is going to happen this fall. Liberals will go into the election filled with confidence, but they will soon find the stadiums are empty and the six people there don’t really care. Then, for the next four years, they will wonder how the U.S. got it so wrong, again.

TDM

In 1925 Adolph Hitler talked about the use of the big lie. He talked about a lie so collosal that no would would believe that someone would have the impudent to distort the truth so infamously. Adolph Hitler used this strategy  to take total control in Germany. The same tactic is being used by the liberal left today to take total control of you.

You are being lied to each and every day. Sadly, the people who claim to be fact checkers are often the worst offenders. Following is a classic example of how factcheck.org claims to have fact checked something, produces a blatantly false and misleading headline, and then documents that the story they are mocking is absolutely accurate.

https://www.factcheck.org/2020/05/outdated-fauci-video-on-face-masks-shared-out-of-context/

The headline:

Outdated Fauci Video on Face Masks Shared Out of Context.

The article confirms what Fauci said. It was in response to question by Dr. Jon LaPook, chief medical correspondent for CBS news.

LaPook, March 8: There’s a lot of confusion among people, and misinformation, surrounding face masks. Can you discuss that?

Fauci: The masks are important for someone who’s infected to prevent them from infecting someone else… Right now in the United States, people should not be walking around with masks.

LaPook: You’re sure of it? Because people are listening really closely to this.

Fauci: …There’s no reason to be walking around with a mask. When you’re in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask might make people feel a little bit better and it might even block a droplet, but it’s not providing the perfect protection that people think that it is. And, often, there are unintended consequences — people keep fiddling with the mask and they keep touching their face.

LaPook: And can you get some schmutz, sort of staying inside there?

Fauci: Of course, of course. But, when you think masks, you should think of health care providers needing them and people who are ill. The people who, when you look at the films of foreign countries and you see 85% of the people wearing masks — that’s fine, that’s fine. I’m not against it. If you want to do it, that’s fine.

LaPook: But it can lead to a shortage of masks?

Fauci: Exactly, that’s the point. It could lead to a shortage of masks for the people who really need it

The same article says that the CDC changed its position because of recent studies. But those studies did not actually study face masks at all. Here is what CDC said:

“We now know from recent studies that a significant portion of individuals with coronavirus lack symptoms (‘asymptomatic’) and that even those who eventually develop symptoms (‘pre-symptomatic’) can transmit the virus to others before showing symptoms,” the CDC said in its announcement. “In light of this new evidence, CDC recommends wearing cloth face coverings in public settings where other social distancing measures are difficult to maintain (e.g., grocery stores and pharmacies) especially in areas of significant community-based transmission.”

Note that even here the CDC is only recommending masks in places where people cannot social distance. Now we have to wear mask at the same time we are ordered to stay at least six feet away from people. The current CDC guidelines contradict their own analysis.

I have still seen zero evidence that this transmission is impacted at all by wearing a cloth face mask. I haven’t even seen a study evaluating this. This is like noting the weather forecast for tomorrow indicates rain, so everyone should switch from wearing briefs to boxer shorts. This is not just stupid, it is insane.

The only thing that really changed was the desire of the government to do something visible that looked” like they were doing “something” to keep us safe. They also wanted to take control of our lives. So they chose face masks, because they are easy to see and a lot of people will buy the non-scientific argument that face masks actually do something. In addition, they ignored something really important. Fauci said there were unintended consequences, people keep fiddling with the mask and they keep touching their face.

He was and is spot on. People are wearing cloth masks that in some cases are obviously used over and over again. They are wearing bandannas, pretty masks, masks with slogans or my favorite, expensive masks with ventilation knobs designed to make it easier to breathe and which make the mask absolutely worthless.

It is bad enough to be mask shamed by self-righteous people typically wearing anything other than a clean new mask. It is even harder to tolerate when you realize they motivated by deliberately misleading information and making everyone wear a mask is not only ineffective, it is not only stupid, it is actually dangerous for a lot of people.

Lies always hurt someone. Lies told by government official hurt everyone. Lies, backed up by