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For a while I was taking a number of “old-fart” classes, better known as adult education classes. No matter what the topic, the scenario in the class always turned out basically the same. Early on, someone, usually a male, sitting in the front row near the middle of the room, would ask a question. In actuality the question was usually just a way for this person to subsequently demonstrate to the rest of us how smart he was. Initially it was always perplexing to me as to why someone would take a class, for instance, on the Mideast, when he already “knew everything” about the Mideast. I say, initially, because after a while, it became apparent that what was important was for that person to put himself at the center of attention. Sure we all remember that type in high school and college, but by senior citizen time, I would have thought that this “I need to be the center of attention” individual would have gotten over it. Not so!
In politics we have that same type of individual(s), who seems to crave the spotlight. They do not seem to realize how amazingly self-centered they appear. Of course just as with Mr. “I am the only one that matters” in that senior’s class, one politician in particular appears to be attempting to appeal to that group of children who, seemingly, are content to follow the Pied Piper of Burbank wherever he decides to take them. Little Adam needs to be the center of attention. “I need to write the Democratic memo, since I am the ranking minority member of the House Intelligence Committee, and everyone wants to hear what I think! I purposely made my memo four pages longer than the Republican memo, because what I have to say is more important.”
Guaranteed that after his memo is eventually released, he will be complaining about something. After the Republican memo was released, he complained “that Devin Nunes had altered the memo without consulting him” (it is suspected that a comma was taken out). He charged that Nunes had worked with the White House on edits (unsubstantiated bluster). He brazenly predicted that “the release could lead to an Oklahoma City style bombing, because people will have lost trust in the FBI” . . . of course the logical thing to do from his perspective is to issue another memo to draw even more attention to the situation!?
Last week I learned a new word, “atychiphobia” which means fear of failure.
This week’s new word is “schiffophobia” which means a fear of not being in the spotlight in front of the TV cameras.

As we all probably learned in childhood there are sins of omission and sins of commission. To simplify, if you forgot to tell your parents that you had accidentally broken the neighbor’s window, that would be a sin of omission (“Oops, I omitted telling the truth about what happened!”) On the other hand deliberately picking up a rock and throwing it at the neighbor’s window, that would be a sin of commission. (There’s no “oops” involved here.)
Perhaps because this is Sunday, and I have been more focused on things “that I have done and things that I failed to do,” I am getting amused by what our local liberal newspaper has been doing and what they have failed to do. (For the sake of time and space, let’s just refer to this local paper as “Washington Post, West” [WPW].)
Last week WPW was vociferously arguing that Devin Nunes’ memo should not come out. They did not really know what was in “the memo”, but if Adam Schiff (D, CA) was against it coming out, then, by God, it should not be released to the public . There were multiple articles, a lot syndicated from the real Washington Post, that even went so far as arguing that a Constitutional crisis would ensue if “the memo” were released. WPW was going all-in with the Dems on this. They were indeed committed. “The memo” was similar to a Whopper or a Big Mac that should not be ordered or digested!

Now today, two days after “the memo” was released, as best I can tell there has been no demonstrable “Constitutional crisis.” The editorial cartoon refers to “the memo” as a “ Nothingburger.” Today despite the fact that a lot of the info in “the memo” is indeed astounding, in the WPW front page section there are only two short pieces about “the memo.” The lead story from the A.P. is about President Trump’s reaction to “the memo” and there is but one short piece from WaPo about the FBI’s reaction to the release of “the memo.” There is nothing substantial about what “the memo” actually says . . . it appears as if anything referring to the substance of “the memo” has been omitted.
Articles about how the FBI conveniently forgot to mention in their FISA request that the Steele dossier was paid for by the DNC and the Clinton campaign – omitted!

Articles about how the FISA courts were originally set up to monitor foreign terrorists, but here the FBI used the FISA court to spy on an American citizen.- omitted

Articles about how the matter was brought before FISA judges four times and the FBI forgot to mention all of the potential conflicts of interest involving DOJ official, Bruce Ohr, and his wife working for Fusion GPS, which was doing opposition research for the Clinton campaign. – omitted!

Articles about how the FBI used the Steele dossier even though they apparently knew that it was “salacious and unverified”, at least according to James Comey – omitted!

It will be interesting to observe how committed WPW will be to the upcoming “Democratic memo”. I would bet that nothing will be omitted!

Well the results are in, and they were not good. I am talking about the T.V. ratings for the 60th Grammy Awards on 1/28/18. Compared to last years show, the ratings were down 20%, and that was despite the show in 2017 facing stiffer competition on T.V. Ouch!
‘Deadline’ called these ratings an all time low for the ceremony. There are multiple possible reasons for this ratings debacle. Incredibly the show featured a reading by “Crooked Hillary,” a twice failed presidential candidate, from the debunked book, “Fire and Fury.” The show also featured Jay-Z who was, and still is, in a public feud with Donald Trump. All in all I think that the general public has had enough of the Hollywood elite bashing our President, as throngs of Americans are tuned out and thus did not tune in to watch the Grammys. (I did not watch the Grammys this year. )
If this were a prize fight, the round clearly went against the liberals.
Speaking of liberals not winning the T.V. ratings war, let’s go back one more time to the NFL and it’s tanking ratings because of the National Anthem controversy. The T.V. ratings for the NFL Conference Championship games on 1/20/18 were down 8% compared to last years games. This means that almost four million less T.V.s, (including my T.V.) were tuned into the NFL Conference Championship games in 2018 compared to 2017. This is not an outlier as the T.V. ratings for the NFL divisional championship games the weekend before were down 16% compared to 2017. Ouch!
Again if this were a prize fight, these rounds clearly went against the liberals.
It will be interesting to see what happens to the T.V. ratings for the Super Bowl, which is much less a football game than it is an extravaganza. But here I will go out on a limb, and predict that the ratings will be lower compared to last year.
I feel a lot more confident about predicting the T.V. ratings for Hollywood’s version of the Super Bowl, the Academy Awards Show, on March 4th. I project a T.K.O. with the ratings for this show tanking significantly compared to 2017.

Apparently twelve of the House Democrats boycotted the State of the Union speech by President Trump on 1/30/2018. Keeping in mind that this is a dramatic decrease from the number of Demo-brats that had boycotted President Trump’s inauguration last year, an optimist could say that progress has been made. Interestingly, of the twelve that boycotted the speech, half (6) were from California and Illinois, and I would guess that about half were members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC). Supposedly, prior to the planned speech, Nancy Pelosi “warned” her Democratic colleagues not to cause a scene by walking out during the President’s speech. Is it possible that this warning to behave like adult scouts from the den mother was instrumental in some not showing up at all?
However, in the long run those Demo-brats who did not show up were spared the embarrassment of looking like pouting three years olds who did not want to play Pin-the-Tail-on-Donkey at a neighborhood friend’s birthday party. Those members of the Congressional Black Caucus, who showed up, looked especially petulant when the cameras captured them sitting on their hands when Mr. Trump talked about job creation, higher wages, and the record low African-American unemployment rates. Really?? Other issues which did not engender any interest from the Demo-brats on left side of the aisle included nonpartisan issues, such fighting against the opioid epidemic, diminishing the Islamic State, decreasing drug prescription costs, and “in God we trust.” Mrs. Pelosi consistently had one of those lemon-sucking like facial expressions that you warn your kids about – “be careful as your face could freeze like that!” But to be fair she did recognize the National Anthem, even while shrugging her shoulders and looking towards her minions.
The President did a good job of using compelling stories about sympathetic individuals to reenforce multiple different points during his speech. Unfortunately the sustained ovations that followed each of these stories added to the length of the speech, but the warmth and the compassion brought out by the stories was worth the time.
Of course I liked the speech, but what did the country in general think of it? The initial “hot off the press” CBS poll had the overall approval rating at 75%, with an approval of 97% among Republicans, 72% among Independents, and 43% among Democrats. Of note to me is the approval rating among Democrats (43%) who watched on T.V. was dramatically higher than the approval rating of 1% (Joe Manchin of WV being the exception) of the Demo-brats who heard the speech live and in person. Perhaps the State of the Union is on the upswing!

On Jan. 25, 2018 an article appeared in the New York Times concerning President Trump’s alleged desire in June to fire special consul, Robert Mueller, who is overseeing the “Russia investigation.” This old news of alleged action by Mr. Trump was supposedly thwarted by White House consul, Donald McGahn, threatening to quit over this matter. The NYT’s sources for this story spoke on the condition of anonymity, because “they did not want to be identified discussing a continuing investigation”.
Now to me there are two issues with this story.
First we are again confronted with “unnamed sources.” Do these sources have some axe to grind with President Trump? Why do theses sources feel that it is okay to speak to the NYT about “a continuing investigation,” but yet it is not okay to use their names because of “a continuing investigation?” I don’t know if this story is true or “fake news” . . . but as soon as I read that it is based on anonymous sources, I usually do not attach a lot of credulity to it. Actually for a second, let’s assume that the unnamed sources are telling the truth. Again, who cares! The back and forth between somebody and his attorney goes on all of the time. Why is this news?
To me the second issue with this story is even more perplexing – or perhaps not really perplexing at all. This is late January, 2018 and Trump’s supposed wanting to fire Mueller occurred in June, 2017, eight months ago. Why report this supposed old news now? Is it possible that a paper like the NYT would sit on a potential story so that they could print it at a certain time so to distract its readers when there is a high likelihood that Mr. Trump should be getting some favorable press because of something he is doing. This “distraction technique” is one that is favored by liberals and especially the liberal press. Coincidentally President Trump was going to Davos, Switzerland to give a speech at the World Economic Forum that was being attended by many world leaders. He was to be the first sitting American President to attend this meeting in over 20 years. So did Mr. Trump get the headline that day or the next day? Of course not, as the TV news shows were leading with this eight month old story from unnamed sources. How convenient, especially in view of the fact that his speech in Davos turned out to be well received.
My postulate is that whenever our President does something good, there will be a corresponding “distraction” story, and if you think that this is just serendipity the next time it happens . . . I have a bridge to sell you!

I went with my two year old granddaughter to a “tumbling” class this morning. The teacher was nice, but the class bordered on chaos because one of the two year olds would only obey the teacher’s directions if he felt like it. However, kudos to the teacher, as she did not allow the two year old outlier to control the class. Even though the recalcitrant two year old pouted, and tried to focus all of the attention on himself, the class went on as advertised. Those who obeyed the rules, benefited from the teacher who was the adult in the room. In general the kids who behaved had a good time and the parents got what they paid for.
When I got home I picked up the newspaper and read about the recalcitrant mayors who boycotted U.S. Conference of Mayors in Washington, D.C. on 1/24/18. These “adults” in the newspaper article seemed exactly like the self-centered two year old at tumbling. The President was scheduled to talk about infrastructure, the opioid epidemic, and the economy at this conference – all critically important issues to the country, in general, and to the mayors and their cities in particular. These four Democratic mayors from big cities do not like the person in charge (the President), or the rules (the laws that his A.G. was enforcing), and so they tried to focus all of the attention on themselves.
These “adult” outliers pouted and did not want to participate with the scheduled agenda. They did not like the teacher and how the teacher was conducting the class, and so they decided to try to draw attention to themselves. This, despite the fact that the citizens of their cities are very concerned with infrastructure, the ongoing opioid crisis, and the economy.
They were each against following all the rules (they refuse to obey the laws of the U.S.), but instead choose to follow only the laws that they like. When on the day before, the Attorney General insisted that all of the laws of the country be followed, they pouted and subsequently tried to make themselves the center of attention. In essence the bumblers were saying, “I will obey only the rules that I like, and I will obey them only when I want.” They boycotted the conference.
Now while this may be anticipated behavior for a two year old, it is not acceptable behavior in adults. Is the behavior for these adult Democratic mayors anticipated? Perhaps, “yes!” Acceptable for adults? Certainly not.
These four were insistent on making statements to justify their immature behavior, and by doing so getting their names in the paper. I purposely have not mentioned the names of these four bumbling pouting mayors . . . with the same reason that the T.V. cameras do not show streakers onto the field in the middle of a baseball game – i.e. juvenile behavior in adults should be ignored! When I was growing up we referred to these types of recalcitrant two year old show-offs as a spoiled brats . . . and in today’s world we should still refer to these bumbling show-offs as spoiled brats.

A horse with blinders is supposed to run straight. If that horse were to consistently veer to the left, then one would think that there is something wrong with the blinders. However, here in California the Democratic politicians seem to consistently wear blinders that cause them always to veer to the left. The latest nonsense that is coming from the lefties in Sacramento is in response to the new tax laws which limit SALT deductions to $10,000. Of course, the Sacramento Legislature is in a state of panic, as over the course of the next year many Californians are going to realize that most of the the pound of flesh that they had been forking over to Sacramento in the form of high California state taxes can no longer be claimed as a deduction on their federal taxes.
What to do?

Seemingly, there are five options for the politicians:
1. Accept the new tax law and try to make the best of it. Think again. This will not
happen as the politicians in Sacramento cannot fathom that their policies have
led to this problem, and so there can be no acceptance.
2. File suit. Unfortunately, at this point I think that they do not know whom to sue. Think again! I predict that it is only a matter of time before there is a suit filed which will then be reviewed in the ninth circuit.
3. Try to figure out some way to skirt the new law.
The first reflex response was on 1/4/18. Kevin de Leon, leader of the California State Senate had a “brilliant” idea. Instead of writing a check to the Franchise Tax Board (the collector of the state taxes), tax payers could make the check out to “California Excellence Fund.” This would then be considered as a deductible contribution, which would give California tax payers a dollar for dollar state tax credit  . . . and this would then be deductible on the federal return, because it was a contribution and not a state tax! This lame-brained scheme is so out in left field that I would think that the person who thought this up would be embarrassed to attach his name to it . . . but think again, as this is California.
4. Revenge! “Make somebody pay!”
The most recent option, a proposed Constitutional Amendment, is #4 – to convince the voters that businesses have to pay. This scheme proposed by Kevin McCarthy (D, Sac) and Phil Ting (D, S.F.) involves a “tax surcharge” on California companies that make more than one million so that half of the federal tax cut would then go to programs that benefit low income and middle class families. Of course, a logically thinking person would quickly realize that in the long run this would just drive more businesses out of the state, and half of nothing always comes out to nothing. But think again, as this is California.
5. Reduce state expenditures so that state taxes can be reduced. Although this would seem like a logical course of action, think again for this is not in the thought processes of any Democratic politician in Sacramento.
As we are still January, there will be more of #1- #4, but don’t hold your breath for #5!

I had intended this to be an entire essay on the ridiculous Schumer Shutdown, but Schumer caved as the Dems realized that they had put themselves in a very bad position. Recordings of comments from both Schumer and Bernie Saunders in 2013
(when Republicans shut down the government) were played over and over, exposing both of them as the political hacks that they are. Schumer’s 2013 comments were condescending to Republicans, and when played back made him look like an ass as he was now the one playing “stupid is what stupid does”! When Bernie was reminded of his comments, he hesitantly mumbled that he did not remember! How convenient for him!
However the most amazing and outlandish thing that I heard had to do with Schumer releasing the Senate Dems to vote as they wished. “Releasing the Senate Dems” certainly implies that the Senate Dems cannot vote on their own and cannot follow their own consciences and principles when a vote comes up. It appears that they are all afraid of getting on Godfather Schumer’s bad side. Something is really wrong when an ideologue like Chuckie Schumer has all this power!
Like I said, I was ready to write the entire blog on the Schumer Shutdown, but Schumer shut it down. So I am switching to the “shut-up” story of the week
This amazing “shut-up” news story comes from California. Here in the land of fruits and nuts, California’s Attorney General, Xavier Becerra, is threatening business owners with prosecution and a $10,000 fine if they do not shut-up if I.C.E. comes calling to their place of business. When I read this all I could think of was the incredible irony here. Think about it. The highest legal authority in the state is basically directing the people in his state to disobey Federal Law and lie if I.C.E. comes to business establishment. I had thought that the concept of states rights was settled with the Civil War in the 1860s, but maybe Xavier did not study much U.S. history in law school. However, there is a logical explanation for Mr. Becerra obtuse proclamation. Perhaps he is trying to get the support of all the illegals in California when he challenges Diane Feinstein for her U.S Senate seat. You know all of those illegals that do not vote in this state . . . wink, wink!!
The irony would be even more spectacular if Becerra beats Feinstein in the primary because most of the illegal’s illegal votes went to their amigo, Xavier. Would Feinstein then have the cajones to challenge the result or would she just “shut-up”?

I initially wrote this a few months ago, and thus far my predictions are spot on as on 1/18/18, Amazon announced the 20 finalists for its planned second headquarters.

In October, 2017 I had written, but not published, the following:

“Recently the proposals to be the location of Amazon’s new corporate site were submitted. There were bids from 238 cities and regions, including proposals from 54 states,provinces, districts, and territories. Is this a big deal? Absolutely. Mayor de Blasio of New York City said, “This is a competition for 50,000 job openings – jobs we want New Yorkers to land.” New York City was proposing four different locations, all of which meet Amazon’s prerequisites.

Amazon has said that it would make a decision on the new location next year.

Does California have a chance to land this economic bonanza? 

On paper, yes.

Practically speaking, no. 

On paper, California does meet the metrics of some of the potential determining criteria. It has the availability of software developers and other tech talent. It has good transportation options as well as recreational opportunities. It certainly has many metro areas with a population of more than one million people. It appears to be a “good cultural fit” as Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s CEO, is about as liberal as one can get.

On paper . . . A slam dunk, with the only question being whether it will be in NorCal or SoCal.

Practically there are number of reasons why California will not be chosen as the site of this new headquarters. Yes, California may make it to the final eight or ten in deference to some political posturing, but that’s it.  First of all the corporate headquarters are in Seattle and it would make no economic sense to put a second headquarters geographically close. Again practically speaking, California is pretty isolated from the rest of the country. A geographically central or perhaps an East coast location would seem to be much more prudent. Despite this geographic mambo-jumbo, there are many more reasons that California is a ‘no’. 

People are leaving California in droves, and it’s not because of global warming. Since the weather is still good, why are they leaving?

Have you ever tried to drive anywhere in the Bay Area or in or near Los Angeles lately? . . . Horrible, with Sacramento and San Diego not far behind. Why would any company subject their employees to this?

The taxes in California are unbelievable – one of the highest state taxes in the country. Why would any company subject their employees to this? 

The cost of housing is very high and steadily getting worse. Why would a company subject their employees to this? 

The state is veering so far to the left, that soon it will be impossible to make a right turn . . . even with an arrow. I do not think that this will be an actual impediment, as birds of a feather, etc., but over time this tendency to veer  towards socialism can only be bad for all of those trapped in the Golden State. Why would a company subject their future employees to this?

Certainly California can prostitute itself with the best of them when it comes to “bribery” and other tax incentives, but this will not be enough. Just ask Toyota who recently relocated from California to Texas.

Going out on a limb, I am going to predict that either a low state-income-tax state or a no-state-income tax state will win this lottery. At this point, Texas and Tennessee are my favorites.”

 

As noted on 1/18/2018, Amazon narrowed the field of 238 to 20 finalists, and as predicted only one California site (Los Angeles) is still in the running – probably “ in deference to some political posturing.” As a handicapper, my October favorites were Texas and Tennessee, and both (Austin and Nashville) are still in the running. Today I am going to add two more long shots to the mix. The first dark horse is Miami. Not only is Florida is a tax-free state, but its easy access to South America could be advantageous  for future business reasons. The other more nebulous, but politically practical reason for Amazon to choose a Florida location is that Amazon’s founder and Chief Executive, Jeff Bezos, is a far left political player. In recent elections Florida has been playing an increasingly influential role politically, and importing 50,00 new Amazon liberal employees into Florida could turn it blue for decades to come. That leads me to my second dark horse, Columbus, Ohio. I threw a dart at the board and it landed on Columbus for the same reason . . . locating the second headquarters to Ohio  would be a wise geographic choice, and this would add 50,000 liberal voters to that state. From Jeff Bezos viewpoint, “Is there a  better way to turn a purple state like Ohio more blue.”

 

“. . . Democrats are itching for a fight with him”, says Greg Valliere, chief global strategist at Horizon Investments, as quoted in Wall Street Journal article on 1/16/2018. Now I don’t know who Greg Valliere is, but ‘him’ refers to Donald Trump, and the article has to do with the possible upcoming government shutdown. Mr. Valliere could also have expanded his statement and said, “they are itching for a fight with him over just about anything, and have been so now for the past year!”
While the main stream media (MSM) have been overwhelmingly anti-Trump (as was documented in a recent Pew Report), the WSJ had been reasonably fair to President Trump – that is until recently.
For instance, this article starts off, “A firestorm ignited by President Donald Trump’s remarks last week has diminished the prospects for a deal on immigration and spending levels ahead of a possible government shutdown at week’s end, congressional aides said.”

There are at least two things wrong with this opening sentence.
First of all, Mr. Trump was acting very presidential when he held a bipartisan meeting with congressional leaders last week. The ‘firestorm’ was actually ignited by Senator Dick (Deke) Durbin of Illinois when he came out and focused on the apparent use of the word, ‘sh**hole’, that Mr. Trump supposedly used when he was referring to certain countries. This is a classic example of Democratic diversion. Not infrequently, Democrats will try to shift the focus away from the message and onto the speaker, or his words, or his tie or her shoes or something else inane. Who cares? They purposely misdirect the focus, so that they do not have to actually address the issues. The meeting itself and the effort by the President to achieve some sort of compromise on the immigration issue should have been the sole focus – not which word he used. Who gives a sh** what word he did or did not use . . . other that Democratic Senator Dicky Durbin and the liberal press?
Whether these were really the words of our president is of no consequence to me.
Whether Mr. Durbin has lied in the past about who said what at confidential meetings, as reported by Politico in 2013, is likewise of little importance.
Shouldn’t the focus be on the overall message and not on one certain word?

The truth of the matter was that there was the potential for a deal between the President Trump and the Democrats on the issues of immigration and the possible government sh**down . . . that is until Deke with the help of the media successfully diverted the attention away from compromise to a “he said, she said” controversy on ‘sh**hole’. Who cares!

Second – “congressional aides said”:
Really? This almost sounds like a “fake news” lead-in that one would read in the MSM.
Who are these congressional aides? Are they aides to Democratic or Republican congressmen or to both? Are we talking about two aides or are we talking about multiple, multiple aides? And actually who cares what these anonymous ‘congressional aides’ think?
It seems to me that the writers of this article are implying that if the government shuts down, it is solely because of Mr. Trump, and that, my friends, “is a crock of sh**!”
Sh*** on you, WSJ!