http;//www.Californiacontrarian.com

The competition between President Trump and Speaker Pelosi is akin to a tennis match between the experienced pro, Nancy Pelosi, and the newcomer, Donald Trump.
The commentary, as put out by the Main Stream Media, is that Pelosi is the favorite, based on her experience and cunning. However one has to wonder as she has never faced an unconventional opponent similar to Mr. Trump in the past. Up to this point in time the match has been even, and Speaker Pelosi is serving.

Serve: Talks screeched to a halt last week when Trump asked Pelosi point blank in the White House Situation Room whether she would negotiate over border wall funds if he re-opened the government.
Return: After Pelosi replied that she would not, Trump said “bye bye” and walked out.
Ms. Pelosi and her coach, Chuck, complained to the media that the unconventional Mr. Trump was playing unfairly!
Point: Trump!

Serve: On 1/16/19, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi played a new card in the shutdown battle. Pelosi sent an open letter to President Trump demanding he reschedule his State of the Union address until after the government had been reopened.

“Sadly, given the security concerns and unless government re-opens this week, I suggest that we work together to determine another suitable date after government has re-opened for this address,” she wrote, “or for you to consider delivering your State of the Union address in writing to Congress.”

A sad attempt at a political stunt! Initially, no response was received. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen dismissed any security concerns, “The Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Secret Service are fully prepared to support and secure the State of the Union.” At this point in the match, Pelosi’s supporters cheered, “What a stroke of genius,” they said in unison!

Return: President Trump responded to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s effort to postpone the State of the Union address by canceling her planned overseas trip and suggesting she fly commercial instead.

Trump wrote to inform Pelosi that her overseas trip that she was planning on making “to Brussels, Egypt and Afghanistan has been postponed. In light of the 800,000 great American workers not receiving pay, I’m sure you would agree that postponing this public relations event is totally appropriate,” Trump wrote.

A blistering return of a tricky Pelosi political service. Ms. Pelosi is now glaring at her coach, Chucky and mouthing “what shall we do now?”

Point: Trump!

Is it possible for a state to have more registered voters than citizens old enough to vote? Is it possible for a county to have more registered voters than it has citizens old enough to vote? If you answered “No” to either of these questions, “wake up, and welcome to reality.”According to the Washington Free Beacon, the state of California has many more registered voters than it has citizens old enough to vote, and Los Angeles County, with more than 10 million residents, has a registered voter count of 112% that of its citizens old enough to vote. These numbers are from an article in the Washington Free Beacon that was reporting on a successful suit brought by Judicial Watch against both the state of California and Los Angeles County. As a result of this suit California has to purge one-and-a-half million voters from its rolls.

How can there be so many more registered voters than actual citizens living in a county or a state?  Are you an optimist or a pessimist? If you are an optimist the astronomical number of potential phantom voters in California and in Los Angeles County is merely due oversight, followed by more oversight, followed by more . . . you get the idea. Oversight implies that whatever has occurred is just an innocent mistake, or in the case of the state of California about one-and-a-half million innocent mistakes! If you believe this whole bugaboo is just a lot to do about nothing, then you are living in a Democratic dream world, as they would typically nonchalantly say, “People move and people die . . . how can anyone keep track?” 

If you are a pessimist these phantom potential voters, whether they have moved or died, have been purposely not deleted from the voting rolls. An oversight? . . . “No!” Skullduggery? . . . At least, and more likely an attempt by some, who feel that they have the Ocasio-Cortez-like “moral high-ground,” in order to insure that the best Democratic candidate wins. Here in California, no one at the polling place ever says, “I thought you moved to Arizona,” or “Aren’t you dead?” One does not have to show any form of I.D. to vote in California. If Mr./Ms. X is on the voting roll, all one has to do is to identify him/herself as Mr./Mrs. X, and he/she is handed a ballot.  In fact individuals who volunteer to work at polling places in California on Election Day cannot work in their own neighborhood polling place, and thus could never ask, “Aren’t you dead?”,  because they would never know about a voter at that particular polling place who has died as they are not in their own neighborhood.

A final piece of irony: In order to get or renew a library card in San Diego, an individual must bring a picture I.D. and proof of residency, like an unopened phone bill. I guess that the city library is more concerned about dead people taking out books than California is concerned about dead people voting!

(You’ll notice that I did not mention the problem of illegals voting. This was not an oversight as I plan to address this issue sometime in the near future.)

0.001 seems like quite a small number to me. Is there anyone who does not agree? This very small number, one-tenth of 1%, is what the present brouhaha over border wall funding would actually cost in terms of the annual budget. Is this worth not paying 800,000 federal workers for now going on 3+ weeks? President Trump spent the Christmas holiday in Washington D.C. (other than those days when he visited some U.S. troops in Iraq and Germany). Rep. Pelosi spent the Christmas holiday in Hawaii. Who wanted to negotiate? Hint: Not the one with the lei!  

Ms. Pelosi has called the border wall immoral . . . well I think that it is immoral for her to continue her posturing while not paying these federal workers! If I were to ever have the misfortune of meeting Ms. Pelosi, I wold ask her if President Obama was acting immorally when he oversaw the construction of over 100 miles of fences and a wall in 2009.

Ms. Pelosi and Sen Schumer, as if reading from the same script, both called a wall “ineffective” and “expensive.” (It’s always nice when your talking points have been written by the same pen!) Nice to say that walls are “ineffective,” but what does history actually demonstrate? In places along the U.S.-Mexican border where a wall has been built,  illegal border crossings have dropped dramatically. In San Diego, a decrease in illegal crossings of 92% since it was completed; in El Paso, a decrease of 95% in the 22 years since that Wall was built; in Tucson, a decrease of 90% in 15 years; in Yuma, a decrease of 95% in 9 years. Yes, Chuck and Nancy, if your barometer of success is set at 100%, then I suppose that 90-95%  is “ineffective!”

Have walls been built anywhere else? A generation ago, 16 countries had man-made barriers separating their borders. Today, that number has swelled to 65.
Have they been effective? Are they expensive?

Ask Hungary about the effectiveness of fence along its Serbia and Croatia borders. ( Illegal immigration there has plummeted.)Ask Israel about the effectiveness of the wall in the West Bank that was built to prevent Palestinians from committing acts of terror inside Israel. [After the wall’s construction, suicide bombings dropped from 73 in the West Bank (between 2000 and July 2003) to 12 (from August 2003 to the end of 2006).]Turkey is presently building a 550 mile wall along its border with Syria. Expensive ? Probably, but Turkey and the European Union, that partially funded it, seem to think that it is worth it.

India has erected a 2500 mile fence along its entire border with Bangladesh in order to minimize illegal immigration and narcotics smuggling. Ah, illegal immigration and narcotics smuggling . . . does this sound familiar?! Was it expensive? Probably, but this did not stop India . . . perhaps because Nancy Pelosi does not live there.

There are also multiple other walls around the world, e.g. between Saudi Arabia-Iraq, Greece-Turkey along the Everos river, in Cyprus between the Greek and the Turkish sides, and in Morocco fences surround the two Spanish cities in Africa, Ceuta and Melilla. I may have missed it, but I do not recall hearing Ms. Pelosi calling them immoral!  

What do the American people think on this issue? Is the tide turning? Is support for President Trump growing? According to Washington Post-ABC News poll, support for building a wall on the border, which is the principal sticking point in the stalemate between the president and Democrats, has increased over the past year. Today, 42 percent say they support a wall, up from 34 percent last January. A slight majority of Americans (54 percent) oppose the idea, down from 63 percent a year ago. Again I say, the only immoral ones here are those Democrats who are depriving 800,000 federal workers of a paycheck just for the sake of 0.001 in a Pelosi-pissing contest!

Recently I had an interesting conversation with my friend, let’s call him Lew. Lew is staunchly conservative and wise beyond his years, but what made this especially fascinating was that it was about the experiences of his brother-in-law, let’s call him Anders. Now granted most conversations with, or about, brothers-in-law are not what one would call “riveting,” but Anders is a State Senator in California, a Republican State Senator – an endangered species in a vast wasteland, but not yet extinct.

Anyway Lew related that he was asking Anders why his fellow Democratic Senators don’t understand the sorry plight that California is in as far as the future is concerned.  Anders sighed and said, “I have repeatedly brought up the fact that California is losing an incredible number of families to other states. I quoted a recent editorial in the Wall Street Journal that stated that middle income families are leaving because of high housing prices fueled by onerous zoning regulations, and that since 2010, 710,000 residents have left California for other states. The response that I got from various Democratic Senators was ‘I don’t believe you or the Wall Street Journal’!”

Lew then said that Anders continued, “Last week I was trying to point out that jobs and businesses are leaving California in droves. I quoted Joe Vranich, a business relocation consultant, who stated that approximately 1800 businesses shifted jobs or capital out of California in 2016, and in the last ten years 1300 companies have left California taking with them  $76.7 billion in capital and 275,000 jobs. At first I thought from their facial expressions that they were genuinely concerned, but my optimism fizzled when they replied, ‘We don’t believe you or Joe Vranich’!”

“Initially I was shocked,” Lew said to me, “but then I recalled the recent comments of Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D,CA) at a meeting at the White House where the Secretary of Homeland Security, Kirstjen Nielsen was trying to present statistics which are the result of our present border policy – ‘In the last two years, ICE officers made 266,000 arrests of aliens with criminal records including those charged or convicted of 100,000 assaults, 30,000 sex crimes, and 4,000 violent killings.’ Finally, according  to those present at the meeting, Rep. Pelosi, after multiple rude interruptions, essentially said that she didn’t believe either the Secretary of Homeland Security or her ICE statistics.” 

Lew then continued, “At first I thought that maybe this “non-believing” was a California thing – that is until, according to the Washington Post, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D,NY) said that it was okay to ‘spew lies’ if you are morally right!” (Wow! This AOC is like manna from heaven . . . for Republicans!)

After this conversation with Lew, my eyes were opened. Now I get it! Apparently all Democrats have to say is, “I don’t believe that,” and, wallah, everything is hunky-dory.!! My question to Democrat politicians: Is saying you don’t believe something when you know that it’s true, the same as “spewing?”
1/10/19

It’s the time of the year for the NFL playoffs, and so I can now stop my boycott of the NFL, and watch some games. This coupled with a recent absurd statement by Bill Walton that Barack Obama would be a good choice for the open U.C.L.A. basketball coaching job probably caused me to wake up suddenly in a cold sweat! Was it just a bad dream?? Barack Obama was the commissioner of the N.F.L.! My initial thought was that the N.F.L. deserved it, but then I thought about the integrity of the game and what a mess he could make of it. 

Consider: In pro-football there are many more black (African American to be P.C) offensive linemen than white or Asian offensive linemen. Why? I don’t know, and I don’t care – that’s just the way it is. What I do know is that these offensive linemen not infrequently get called for “holding” by the referees. They are penalized because they are breaking the rules. (“Holding” is not allowed and everybody knows it.) If Barack Obama were ever to become the commissioner of the N.F.L., he would probably send out a “guidance” letter to all of the chief referees that essentially threatened action if holding penalties on black linemen were not reduced. Even though his new policy would not specifically mention race, the referees would be in violation if there was a disproportionate effect on offensive linemen of a specific race, meaning that if more holding penalties were called on black linemen than on white linemen, the referees would be disciplined. When you look through B.O.’s non-colorblind vision of guards and tackles, it would not matter to him that the vast majority of holding occurs on the offensive line of scrimmage, and that the vast majority of offensive linemen are black. Can you imagine what would happen if a white ref called a holding penalty on a black left tackle? Even if the holding call was found to be justified on replay, B.O. might call the ref a racist, and then . . . perhaps hold a beer summit after the game, so that the press could fawn over him!

After the cold sweat stopped, I realized that I was merely dreaming. Obviously we can all recognize that this football analogy is ludicrous, but Barack Obama applied the same sort of faulty reasoning in 2014 when, in essence, he demanded racial parity in school discipline –  no matter who was causing trouble. This meant that a holding penalty (misbehaving in school) was, in essence, ignored by the referees (school teachers and school principals), because too many children of color were being disciplined. If this type of illogic were to be followed, what would happen on the football field? Duh! There would be real holding by the offensive linemen on practically every play. The game would be chaos. The referees would no longer be in control. Basically the same thing was happening in schools as the teachers were losing the option of disciplining unruly students. On the gridiron, holding is holding, no matter the color of the left tackle’s skin, and in the classroom those acting out and being disruptive should be disciplined,, no matter if the perpetrator’s skin is black, white, yellow or green!

Finally, recently Betsy DeVos and the School Safety Commission rescinded the Obama era policy “that was supposed to reduce racial disparities in school discipline.” Hooray for common sense, and hooray for the concept that schools are for educating children, not coddling trouble-makers. Usually one can tell if a reversal of an absurd policy is a good thing by observing who is against such a reversal. In this case both the Washington Post and Rachael Maddow of MSNBC thought that the School Safety Commission erred in reversing that Obama policy . . . do I need to say any more?

Even though I do not care for Roger Goodall, I am glad that his tenure as commissioner of the N.F.L. is holding!

For years the Middle East has been chaos – a chaotic morass! The Syrian Civil War has been going on for eight years with Assad and his Russian partner now close to waltzing to an Assad victory and a Russian Mediterranean seaport. “Red lines” came and went, while for years Obama tangoed with ISIS on the eastern Syrian dance-floor. In 2017 President Trump cut in and like Dick Clark turned it into a successful American Bandstand as ISIS is no longer a significant threat. Despite that the Middle East is still a quagmire. It is difficult to separate the players as some are Sunni (Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia) and some Shia (Iraq, Lebanon, Iran). And then there is Syria, and of course, Israel . . . i.e. still a chaotic morass.

President Trump has long called for the U.S. to leave the Middle East. On the campaign trail, he said the region was a “total and complete mess” and wished the government had spent the trillions of dollars in the U.S. instead. In 2013, long before he was elected, he said the U.S. should “stay the hell out” of the Syrian war. We did not stay out. After Trump was elected it was only a matter of time before the US military was pulled out of the chaos that is Syria, as Russian and Iranian influence over Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was far too great to be effectively countered by a small U.S. presence in eastern Syria. In March of 2018 President Trump stated that the U.S. would be getting out of Syria very soon, but nothing happened until fortuitously on December 14, in his phone call with President Donald Trump, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan reportedly promised that Turkey would take responsibility for finishing off the Islamic State if the U.S. pulled out of Syria, a senior White House official told NBC News. Erdogan reportedly said to the president, “In fact, as your friend, I give you my word in this,” an official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to disclose details of a presidential phone call.

A way out of the chaotic morass of the Middle East? Strange things happen in strange ways. After asking John Bolton if a pullout was feasible, President Trump decided to pull the US military out of Syria. Of course, there are differing opinions on pulling out of this mess. For me, a U.S. withdrawal won’t turn Syria over to Russia because the Russians already own it. We finally have a chance to escape the chaotic morass of the Middle East, and as a bonus, Turkey now owes us.

What about Afghanistan? It is another morass, that is also chaos . . . one that has been going on for 17 years, the longest war in U.S. history. Before he ran for president President Trump talked of an end to U.S. military deployments overseas. In 2013, he tweeted: “Our troops are being killed by the Afghanis we train and we waste billions there. Nonsense! Rebuild the USA.”  Getting the U.S. out of non-winnable wars became a campaign promise of Mr. Trump. In 2017, 17 members of the U.S. military were killed in Afghanistan, bringing the total to 2297 since the U.S. entered this quagmire back in 2002. Last week President Trump acted on another of his campaign promises, and as Commander-in-Chief he is cutting the U.S. presence in half from 14,000 to approximately 7,000. Of course, there was a difference of opinion on this decision. A statement by Daniel Davis, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Defense Priorities think tank and a retired lieutenant colonel, sums up my feelings on Afghanistan. He said, “As important as it is for the U.S. military to withdraw from Syria, it is even more critical that President Trump end the 17-year war in Afghanistan to focus on higher priorities, like deterring great power conflict,”  in reference to heightened tensions between the U.S. and its top military rivals Russia and China.

As a footnote, I need to address the resignation of James Mattis, the 26th Secretary of Defense, and a retired 4-star Marine General. I have nothing but the greatest respect for James Mattis. As a military man he did not agree with pulling out of Syria  or cutting back troop strength in Afghanistan. He did what he thought he needed to do, and he resigned. One has to admire his standing on principle, but remember, he was but an adviser to the President. Despite what CNN, WaPo, and the NYT say, he was not the Commander-in-Chief that the people elected.

Well it’s happened again!  Last week before Christmas, Gustavo Garcia, an illegal, who could have been/should have been turned over to ICE, was released from custody because of our sanctuary state policy (SB54). He killed at least one and injured four more within 24 hours of his release. The sheriff of Tulare County blamed California’s sanctuary state policy for this senseless tragedy. Now within days following Christmas another illegal, Gustavo Perez Arriaga, has killed another person in Newman, a small town of about 10,000 in Stanislaus County, California. What makes this tragic is that the victim, Cpl. Ronil Singh, was a police officer with a five month old son. What makes this ironic is that Ronil Singh, a legal immigrant from Fiji, was fulfilling his lifelong dream of becoming a police officer.

Sheriff Adam Christianson said Perez Arriaga publicized his gang affiliation and had been arrested twice for driving under the influence, but because of California’s sanctuary law, local authorities were prevented from reporting Perez Arriaga to U.S. immigration officials. “Law enforcement was prohibited because of sanctuary laws, and that led to the encounter with Officer Singh,” Christianson said. “I’m suggesting that the outcome could have been different if law enforcement wasn’t restricted, prohibited or had their hands tied because of political interference.” 

Predictably, former state Sen. Kevin de Leon, the Democrat who wrote the sanctuary state legislation, said it’s “highly irresponsible” to blame the law for the officer’s death. Kevin, we are at two and counting! I think that it was “highly irresponsible” to pass that sanctuary state legislation, as anybody with half-a-brain could have predicted that there would be multiple senseless tragedies as a result. The aforementioned two examples are merely the beginning. These are not unforeseen consequences, but rather foreseen, predictable consequences. Now lest anyone be offended by my “half-a-brain” comment, let me go on record that I meant exactly what I said! 

Now I am not a lawyer (although I once did stay at a Holiday Inn Express), but it seems to me that in the last two weeks there are two dead individuals as a consequence of California’s sanctuary state legislation. I have always thought that immigration was under the purview of the federal government, and California’s sanctuary state laws seem to be direct opposition to federal laws on this issue. The two families of the murdered individuals now have “legal standing,” as they have suffered as a result of these two illegals having been released when they should have been turned over to I.C.E. Who is responsible for the deaths of these two people? . . . two and counting! It seems to me that all of those legislators who voted for AB54, the sanctuary state law in California, are at least partially responsible! Yes, yes, I know that legislators are not supposed to be legally responsible for the bad consequences of their laws . . . but, here, is SB54 actually an illegal law because it is in opposition to Federal law? If so, I would love to see the families of these two murdered individuals bring suit against the State of California, all of the individual legislators who voted for AB54, and Governor Jerry Brown who signed the “death warrant” into law.

Happy New Year!

Some people in Tulare County are having a happy new year, because they are happy to still be alive, whereas others in Tulare County are not having a happy new year because their friend or family member is dead because of Gustavo Garcia and California’s sanctuary state law. Have you heard of Gustavo Garcia? If you live in San Diego and possibly in other areas of California that have liberal newspapers, you probably have not, because the story of Mr. Garcia goes against the religion of leftism that is prevalent in many areas of California. (I sent a letter to the editor about the hell that broke loose in Tulare  County as a result of California’s sanctuary state policy and Gustavo Garcia. Of course now 1 week later, it has not been printed . . .  no surprise!) Gustavo Garcia was an illegal. However, not only was he an illegal, but he had been deported  twice, and also had a prior felony conviction for which he served time over fifteen years ago. After his last arrest in 2014, he was deported . . . but wallah, he was back in California, and was arrested in Tulare County on 12/13/18 because he was behaving erratically. ICE learned he was in custody and issued an immigration hold. However, even though he tested positive for a controlled substance, he was released after ten hours.

Why? Because in 2017 the Democrats in Sacramento passed SB54 and the Democratic Governor, Jerry Brown, signed it into law . . . effectively making California a “sanctuary state.” Before S.B.54 Mr. Garcia would have been turned over to ICE, but as the Tulare County Sheriff stated, “After S.B.54 we no longer have the power to do that.”Now to me this dude is a bad dude. He is not your run-of-the-mill innocent hard working illegal who was arrested for some minor offense. He is not some “good Joe” (or perhaps, I should say, “good Jose”), who was arrested merely because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Gustavo Garcia is a bad dude. However because he was arrested for a misdemeanor, those lawmakers who authored S.B.54 ( inexplicably named “California Values Act”) deemed it best to release this type of individual, bad dude or not!

Within 24 hours of his release Mr. Garcia would shoot and kill a man in Visalia, rob a convenience store of $2000 while firing several shots, steal a GMC truck, fire shots at a patrol car, and lead police on a high speed chase at speeds over 100 mph, and while driving the wrong way on Hwy. 65, smashing into multiple cars, injuring four people who were subsequently hospitalized. Tulare County Sheriff Mike Boudreaux placed the blame for this senseless carnage on S.B.54. “The tool (of coordinating with ICE) has been removed from our hands. And because of that our county was shot-up by a violent criminal.”

Now I can almost hear Governor Brown and his Democratic cronies say that “nothing is perfect, and there will always be some unforeseen consequences!” However what we will never hear from these liberal lawmakers is an apology. A Christmas apology to the friends and family of the dead man in Visalia, and likewise we will never hear anything close to an apology to those injured in Tulare County because their “California Values Act” allowed Gustavo Garcia to be set free instead of being turned over to I.C.E!

How hard should it be to say something nice about another person at Christmastime?

A New York Times article was titled “President Trump Makes Surprise Visit to American Troops in Iraq,” but the article spoke mostly about pulling troops from Syria, the border wall, and the shutdown. To me this seemed like an example of “bait and switch,” but then I guess that the liberal NYT finds it difficult, even at Christmas, to say anything nice about our President.

On 12/26 NBCNews criticized the President because he had not gone to see the troops at Christmas. When it turned out that they were wrong, they changed the headline to read “Trump becomes first president since 2002 not to visit troops on or before Christmas.”  A lame attempt at an apology. I guess that the liberal NBCNews finds it difficult, even at Christmas, to say anything nice about our President.

But compared to CNN both the NYT and NBCNews at least made an attempt to be close to civil. CNN’s Don Lemon on the other hand doubled down on incivility when he called our President “The Grinch” for visiting the troops, and a CNN news analyst said that Donald Trump “stole Christmas!”(by visiting the troops in a dangerous area??!!). I guess that CNN finds it difficult to say anything nice about Donald Trump, and instead seemingly goes out of it’s way to say nasty things about our President . . . Christmas be damned!

Did President and Mrs. Trump have a merry Christmas? What did President Trump and Melania do over the Christmas holiday? I had a difficult time finding out this info, although I admit that I did not watch CNN or NBCNews! However, I was able to scrape up a few details about how they spent Christmas.

On Christmas Eve both the President and Mrs. Trump spoke to children on the phone in conjunction with the traditional NORAD tracking of Santa. They both talked to children, and asked them questions about Santa. Melania called it one of her favorite things to do, and I call it a nice thing for both of them to do. The next morning they both attended a Christmas service at the National Cathedral in Washington D.C. During the day President Trump made a series of separate video calls from the Oval Office. He tele-conferenced with troops in Guam, Bahrain, Qater, and Juneau, Alaska. He thanked the troops for their service, success, and sacrifice before wishing them all a Merry Christmas. A nice thing for the President to do, especially on Christmas Day.

Then at around midnight on Christmas night he and Melania made history when they flew together into a war zone. They flew secretly into the combat zone to visit the military men and women in the dining hall at Al Asad Air Base in Iraq. The troops chanted, “USA! USA! USA!…” when President Trump and Melania Trump took the stage to a standing ovation. After thanking them all for what they do, he wished them a Merry Christmas, signed at least one Make America Great Again hat, and was in a number of selfies taken by the individual airmen and airwomen. One soldier told the Commander in Chief, “I came back into the military because of you.” President Trump responded, “And I am here because of you.”An extremely dangerous and very nice thing to do.

After taking off from Iraq, and before returning home, he and Melania stopped at Ramstein Air Base in Germany. There he again thanked the troops for their service and wished them a Merry Christmas. This was an unnecessary, but thoughtful stop, en route to arriving safely back to the U.S.A. the next day. A nice thing to do.

To me that all sounds like President Trump and Melania had an extremely full and patriotic Christmas with a large part of his day devoted to the military. Yes, the past two presidents visited some of our troops at Christmastime . . . in Hawaii and in Washington D.C. As best I can tell none of the liberal media commented that this president, in contra-distinction to the past two, made a Christmas visit to troops that were in a place that was actually a war zone. It is difficult, if not impossible, for them to say anything nice about this president. As opposed to the NYT, NBCNews, and CNN, however, I have no trouble saying nice things about our President’s use of his time at Christmas, and I echo “USA! USA! USA!”

Some things make me scratch my head, but no matter how much scratching I do, I still do not understand why. Yesterday a friend sent me an article from CNSNews.com that was about the educational achievements in different U.S. states. This new data, some of which was surprising and some expected, was from the Census Bureau. 

The two things that this article focused on were: 1) Percentage of residents 25 and older who never finished ninth grade. 2) High school graduates
In terms of completing ninth grade 9.7 percent of California residents 25 and older, the Census Bureau says, have never completed ninth grade. This embarrassing 9.7 % puts California on the top of this list! This did not make me scratch my head. In California, according to the Census Bureau’s five-year estimates, the resident population 25 and older was 25,950,818. Of those individuals, 2,510,370—or 9.7 percent–never completed ninth grade! Nationwide, 5.4 percent of residents 25 and older have never finished ninth grade, according to the latest five-year estimates. For comparison Wyoming has only 1.8%, and Montana 2.1% that have not completed ninth grade. Additional random scanning of list of dubious distinction has Ohio at 2.9% and Massachusetts at 4.6%. The part of this list that I am scratching my head about is the position of Texas, as for the most part California and Texas are at opposite ends of the spectrum, but yet Texas is the only state can comes close to California. Texas is second on this list with 8.7% of its residents having failed to complete ninth grade. (FYI: New York and New Mexico are tied for third with a distant 6.5%)
In terms of high school graduates, California finished last, number 50, with only 82.5 percent of its residents having graduated from high school. What makes this stat even more amazing is that in California children are required to attend school from six years of age until they are 18. “California’s compulsory education laws require children between six and eighteen years of age to attend school, with a limited number of exceptions,” says the California Legislative Analyst’s  Office, an agency of the California state government. Rhetorically I might scratch my head and ask, “what are these non-graduating eighteen year olds doing in school if they are not graduating”? However, again the part that has me scratching my head is the position of Texas on this list. Texas is a close second at 82.8 . . . meaning that only 82.8% of Texas residents ha have graduated from high school. Mississippi, Louisiana, and New Mexico close out the bottom five, while the national average is 87.3.
While these statistics are interesting and depressing at the same time, I believe that they have some interesting political implications. “How so?”, you might ask. 
From my perspective, if one hasn’t completed ninth grade, then his/her ability to read and to understand what they have read, is suspect. This makes the results of  California ballot propositions very imperfect. If 9.7% cannot truly understand what the ballot proposition means, what are they actually voting on? Similarly with only 82.5% of Californians with high school degrees, it is improbable that Republicans will be elected to statewide offices any time soon, as the majority of the 17+% without a high school diploma will be voting Democratic for a variety ofreasons.However, on the national scene the results from Texas are very worrisome, as 8.7% of its residents have failed to complete the ninth grade. The emergence of Democrat Beto O’Rourke could well be the canary in the coal mine for Texas. The recent Senate race in Texas implies that most of those 8.7% voted for O’Rourke, and recall that those states that rank the 3rd and the 4th worst on the “finishing of ninth grade” stats are both heavily Democratic (New York and New Mexico).Could it be that the Dems are keenly aware of these statistics and their implications? And could it be that is why they do not seem very motivated to remedy poorly performing schools? About this, I do not need to scratch my head!