You Choose

When it comes time to vote in about three weeks, you really only have to ask yourself two questions: first, am I better off today than I was two years ago? And second, is the country headed in the right direction?

Now, I can't answer that first question for you personally. But I'm a pretty average guy. Okay, maybe above average, in terms of income and assets, compared to the national average, certainly. So if I'm worse off than I was two years ago, the average Joe (or Jane) has got to be a lot worse off. Without telling you more than I care to divulge, let me give you a view of where I am today vs. where I was a couple of years ago.

Two years ago, I was basically making twice as much annually on my investment portfolio as I earn in salary, and my salary puts me in a pretty high percentile among U.S. earners. Year-to-date this year, my portfolio is down about 30%. Joe Biden and his vapid Press Secretary like to argue that the stock market isn't the best barometer. Yeah, well, when you're 63 years old and thinking about retirement, it's certainly a consideration.

True, my income has increased in each of the past two years, such that it's up nearly 10% vs. two years ago. However, my cost of living is up 8.3%, so I'm hardly better off, income-wise. And my income has only increased because of my own performance, not because of anything the current administration or legislature has done. My income has increased by at least that amount throughout my career, no matter who was in office.

Speaking of my cost of living, that 8.3% is an overall number. Two years ago (January 2021 is my exact benchmark, by the way), I was paying $2.25 a gallon for gas. Now, I'm paying close to four bucks, and I'm supposed to be thanking Joe Biden for what he's done to "bring it down" from closer to five bucks. (Which is unadulterated BS, by the way; what brought it down from the peak was reduced demand, because nobody could afford to drive at those prices.) So my 18.8 gallon gas tank costs me about $33 more to fill each time.

The cost of food is up 11.2% year-over-year. It hasn't been up that much since just after I started college. It's up 10% vs. two years ago. So between gas being up about 50% and food being up about 10% (I'm annualizing these numbers, if you're paying attention), my salary increases are pretty much gobbled up.

All my other costs are higher, too, but I'm not going to delve into every spending category. Suffice it to say that by any standard of living metric, I'm worse off. And since overall I'm better off than about 90% of most Americans, chances are you're worse off, too.

Fortunately, I live in an area where crime isn't a big problem. However, I love to travel. Not long before covid reared its ugly head, I had a two-week work trip in the Fall to Oregon. It was beautiful. A colleague and I stayed the weekend, and we spent one day driving from Portland down to Eugene, then over to the coast, up to the Willamette Valley, and back to Portland. The next day, we drove along the Columbia Gorge, visited Multnomah Falls, then drove around Mt. Hood and down to Bend, before returning via the Santiam River valley.

I vowed to make a return trip with my wife. But Portland has become such a cesspool of lawlessness that I'm too concerned about our safety to travel there. The same is true of New York, where we've spent many enjoyable trips, walking the city, feeling the energy, seeing the sights, enjoying Broadway shows, strolling Central Park. Now, I'm afraid I'd get knifed on the street. Same with Chicago, another great city where I've spent a fair amount of time.

The only state I've never been to is Delaware, and I'd like to cross it off my list. But, I've always imagined combining it with a trip to Philadelphia to see the Liberty Bell and other historical sites. Yet Philly, too, has become crime-infested, and so I'm holding off on that trip as well.

We had a cruise booked out of L.A. in March 2024, to the Mexican Riviera. We'd never done that itinerary before, and it sounded interesting. We always spend the night before a cruise in a hotel, so that we don't miss our embarkation due to flight delays.

Then we learned that the city of L.A. is planning a ballot initiative that would require hotels to house homeless people in their vacant rooms. Now, I'm sensitive to the plight of the homeless, and have gone out of my way to help them, and have contributed to their causes. But not all the homeless, especially in L.A., are just down-on-their-luck individuals that need a place to sleep. Early this year, a homeless man walked into a furniture store in L.A. and stabbed the 24-year-old female clerk to death. And last summer, another homeless man stabbed a NASCAR driver to death while he was filling his tank at a suburban gas station.

Needless to say, we switched our itinerary to a cruise out of Florida.

What am I waiting for to travel to these locales? Well, the reason for the rampant uptick in crime in cities like New York, Chicago, Portland, Seattle, L.A., and Philly is liberal lawmakers and governors who push no-bail or cash bail laws that put violent criminals back on the street hours after they commit crimes, only to offend again; and liberal district attorneys who refuse to prosecute even serious crimes. So until that changes, I'll stick to the safer enclaves, with sane governments.

And you know what? If I'm not safe in those cities, neither are you. You can take your chances and go there anyway. But you're taking your chances. There's no getting around it: those cities are more dangerous by far than they were two years ago. And for the people unfortunate enough to live there, it's certainly not safe. In suburban Portland, a man recently listed his home for sale as-is, because squatters had moved in, and he couldn't afford a lawyer to evict them under Oregon's liberal laws, which favor the squatters. When the man went to ask the squatters to leave, they beat him up and put him in the hospital, yet the police still wouldn't remove them. I doubt that he'd say he's better off than he was two years ago.

Now, back to the economy; what about economic conditions in general? Well, if you have a job, count yourself lucky, and know that the condition may be temporary: more than 35,000 layoffs have been announced in the U.S. since June. In case you haven't noticed, we're in a recession, and all the current administration is doing about it is trying to convince you that the definition of a recession isn't what you've always understood it to be. And even if you want to drink the administration's kool-aid, a number of very reliable leading indicators point to recessionary conditions, including the fact that consumer sentiment is lower than it was during the pandemic or the 2008-09 housing crisis or the 2000-01 housing bubble or the early 1990s credit recession or the recession before that. Then there's the fact that the yield curve is currently inverted (meaning short-term interest rates are higher than long-term rates, which signals an expectation that, longer-term, the Fed is going to have to start cutting rates to jump-start a struggling economy; of course, first they have to finish raising rates to try to rein in the runaway inflation caused by rampant government spending and backwards energy policy).

Want to buy a house? You're going to pay more in interest than at any time since 2002. Couple that with the fact that inflationary conditions have driven house prices into bubble territory, and home affordability is worse than it's ever been. Of course, all bubbles must burst, so if you bought a house in the last year or so, you paid more than it was really worth, so expect that home's value to drop like a rock over the next year.

Now, you pay taxes, right? Do you care about what that money gets spent on? Well, did you go to college? Did you pay your own way? Maybe take out some student loans that you worked hard to pay off? Now your tax dollars are paying off somebody else's student loans - and that somebody's parents might make a lot more money than you do, because the $125,000 income limit now applies to Junior, if he's graduated and out on his own.

What else are your taxes going toward? Well, the equivalent population of Houston, Texas, the nation's fourth-largest city, has entered the U.S. illegally under this administration, and those people are going to receive health care, education, and other services that the government is going to pay for (and when it comes to paying for things, the government is you).

We just learned today that some of your tax dollars are going to go toward a program to pay for our military to volunteer for duty at the southern border. Doing what, you ask? Running errands for the illegal immigrants there. Picking up prescriptions for them. Shredding documents. (What, pray tell, will they be shredding?) Cleaning refrigerators, for crying out loud. Yes, my fellow Americans: our military, cleaning refrigerators for illegal immigrants. On your dime.

Were you worried about covid? Did you think it was a big deal? Well, do you know what else has been flowing freely across the southern border under this administration? Fentanyl. And fentanyl has killed more young people than covid over the last two years, by far. You probably know someone who's lost a loved one to fentanyl poisoning (we say "poisoning" rather than "overdose," since fentanyl is so often disguised as or blended with some other drug).

I could go on. The bottom line is that it's hard to imagine how anyone is better off today than they were two years ago. Now, let's turn our attention to whether the country is headed in the right direction.

Numerous polls, including some from liberal news sources like NBC, show that an overwhelming majority of Americans - 74% in the NBC poll, similar to the numbers from other polls - believe the country is headed in the wrong direction. So if you believe otherwise, congratulations - you're in a very small minority. (Other polling has found that about a quarter of Americans should have their heads examined, are blindly partisan, or are just plain crazy. Of course, at least a quarter of Americans work for the federal government, so ...)

Which party has been in power for the last two years? The Democrats. And which party is responsible for the direction in which we're heading? The party in power - the Democrats.

Now, what are the Democrats running on? What's their platform?

First, abortion. They want abortion on demand, in all 50 states. So if you want to be able to get an abortion any time you want it, right up until birth, anywhere in the U.S., the Democrats are the party for you. If that's what you care most about, by all means, vote Democrat.

Of course, you may say that it's not about that - what you really care about is "women's freedom." Really? How much do you care about a woman's freedom to not have to choose between buying groceries for her family and heating her home this winter? How much do you care about a woman's freedom to not get stabbed to death while she's working at her job in a furniture store, or standing on a subway platform in New York City? How much do you care about a woman's freedom to not get beaten while she's walking home from the corner bodega in Portland? (That's "bogada" to you, Dr. Jill.) Or to not lose her job because there's a recession? Or to not be raped by an illegal immigrant who happens to be a sex offender in his home country?

The second - and only other - plank in the Dems' platform is January 6. You know, the "insurrection." Do you really want to base your vote on something that happened 22 months ago, rather than what's happening today, and what's going to happen for the next two years? If January 6 is that important to you, consider these things:

• Go back and look at what your retirement savings balance was on January 6, 2021.
• Note that a gallon of gas cost $2.25 on January 6, 2021. It's $3.91 now.
• A gallon of milk cost $3.59 in January 2021, vs. $4.41 now.
• A pound of bacon cost $5.83 in January 2021, vs. $7.37 in August 2022.
• Think about the people who were alive on January 6, 2021 that no longer are, due to murders by offenders who were back on the street as a result of lax bail laws, or due to fentanyl poisoning.
• Remember that the U.S. population grew - illegally - by 2,000,000 since January 6, 2021. And you're going to pay for those people's health care and education, among other things.
• Note that the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate was 2.65% on January 6, 2021, vs. 6.92% now.

If you really care about that date in history, think about how things were then, and vote for the party that was responsible for that.

The Democrats claim that the Republicans have nothing to run on. That they have no plan. Well, let me give you a couple of points to consider.

First, the Republicans do have something to run on, something very compelling: they're not the Democrats. They didn't create this mess, and they're not the ones trying to lie about it and make excuses for it now.

Second, even if it were true that the Republicans have no plan, the Democrats certainly don't have a plan. Their plan is to keep doing what they're doing now, which is to drive this train completely off the cliff it's currently hanging precariously over.

But the Republicans do have a plan: restore the policies that were in place before this mess ensued. Low inflation. Cheap gas. A strong economy. Law and order. Safe cities. A secure border. Affordable housing and low interest rates. The Republicans proved they could do all that, because they did it. The Democrats have proven only that they can undo it, in two short years. Two short and painful years.

So you see, the choice is really quite simple: do you want more of the same? Two more equally painful years? Even higher inflation? Eight-dollar gas? Double-digit mortgage rates? Violent crime in a suburb near you? Five million new illegal immigrants over the next two years? Double the number of fentanyl deaths we have today - including your kid?

Or would you rather go back to the way things were two years ago?

Think about it. You have three weeks.

Class Warfare

The Democrats today are dividing Americans into two classes, but they aren't the classes you think. Not strictly so, anyway.

It's not Democrat and Republican, left and right, blue and red, liberal and conservative, progressive and MAGA. It's not really the haves and the have-nots, the elites and the commoners, the one percent and the lower class, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, the degreed and the non-degreed, white collar and blue collar, the rich and the poor.

No, the classes the Democrats are dividing us all into cross some of those lines, drawing into each of these two classes some folks from either side of those more traditional divides.

The classes the Democrats are dividing us into today are the Sharks and the Remora.

The Sharks may be those people on Shark Tank, successful, rich entrepreneurs ruthlessly striking deals to get even richer. But they also include teachers, handymen, consultants, veterinarians, physical therapists, bank tellers, hairdressers, firefighters, policemen, auto mechanics, landscapers, fry cooks, painters, and plumbers. A good many of them are immigrants, many of whom may have originally come here illegally, believe it or not.

By Sharks, I don't mean ruthless, greedy, Type-A people, though many of them are Sharks. I mean people who understand that you eat what you kill. That you and you alone are responsible for providing for yourself. That, like a shark, you hunt for your own food, provide for your own sustenance, don't expect anyone to give you anything. And that expect the government to get the hell out of their way and let them do it, and let them keep what they kill.

Remora, in case you're not familiar with them, are bottom-feeding suckers. Now, they serve a purpose in the whole oceanic eco-system, as cleaners. They suck onto the sharks and get a free ride, and clean up after them, eating what the sharks discard. The sharks, for the most part, leave them alone, because, for the most part, the remora are fairly unobtrusive.

Enter the Democrats, who would seek to upset the entire eco-system. They're doing everything in their power to create a larger, and permanent, Remora class. When the government shut down the economy due to covid - which will forever rank in history as the single most stupid decision humankind ever collectively made - Democrats and Republicans alike made all kinds of aid available as accommodation for those adversely affected economically by the shutdown. PPP loans, extended unemployment benefits, student loan payment pauses, etc.

Once the economy rebounded, though, the Democrats sought to extend those benefits. They kept the unemployment benefits going far longer than was necessary, in order to keep unemployment high, businesses suffering, and the economy sputtering, in order to hurt Donald Trump's chances at re-election in 2020. In Republican-run states, the jobless benefits were terminated early, and job growth in those states took off much faster than in Democrat-run states, where the benefits were extended. The Democrats didn't care if their states' economies suffered; there was a Bad Orange Man to defeat!

The Democrats also extended the pause on repayment of student loans, long after unemployment returned to pre-pandemic levels. Why? To buy the youth vote in the 2022 mid-terms. See, the Dems are taking a beating in the polls, what with a porous southern border, soaring crime (especially in Dem-run cities), skyrocketing inflation, horrendous foreign policy, and a President who can't think straight. So, even though everyone who wants a job now has a job (and there are still more job openings than there are available people to fill them), people who owe money on student debt aren't being required to pay it back until (drum roll, please) after the mid-term elections.

Now, Joe Biden, in utter defiance of the Constitution that he has used so often to wipe his diarrhetic arse, has, without the requisite Congressional approval, authorized the "forgiveness" of $10,000 of student loan debt for anybody who makes, or whose parents make, $125,000 a year individual or $250,000 combined. (FYI, a combined income of $250,000 is pretty darn near the top 5% of income earners in the U.S.) If that person qualified for a Pell Grant when they went to college, they can double down and get $20,000.

Get this: the current maximum amount for a Pell Grant is $6,895. So, if you qualified for the maximum amount (note that this is this year's maximum; if you were in school one to four years ago, the maximum was lower), you can parlay that $6,895 into $10,000 of additional student loan forgiveness. That's not a bad arbitrage, and proof positive that Joe Biden flunked every math class he ever took. But it gets better. The minimum Pell Grant amount is $650. In its sheer and utter brilliance, Biden's plan stipulates that if you got any Pell Grant, in any amount, you get the full extra $10,000 in student loan forgiveness. So, you can go full-on arbitrageur and turn $650 into a cool $10k.

Brilliant, Joe.

Now, the Democrats would argue that the dollar amount of the Pell Grant doesn't matter; if you were poor enough to qualify for one, you ought to get the additional student loan forgiveness. The problem with that argument is this: your parents might have been relatively poor, such that you got a small Pell Grant, sure. Now, you've finished your degree, and you're making a cool $120k a year. Your spouse is making the same coin, putting the two of you near the top 5% of the income scale. If you had college-age kids today, they wouldn't come anywhere close to qualifying for grant money. Yet you still get that extra $10k. And who pays for it? The Sharks - the plumbers, painters, landscapers, and fry cooks. People who make a hell of a lot less than $120,000 a year.

Some Remora are not to blame for being what they are. They simply believe they're taking advantage of something the government is legitimately offering them - just like a Shark will deduct his mortgage interest from his income taxes, assuming he itemizes deductions. (I'm using male pronouns here. If you don't like it - well, my pronouns are she/it. Meaning, if you can't figure out my gender without asking my pronouns, you don't know she/it.) And it's the government's fault, really, for offering all of these handouts, for creating and expanding the Remora class to begin with.

But the difference between the mortgage interest deduction and student loan forgiveness (well, one difference, anyway) is that student loan forgiveness isn't actually forgiveness at all. See, the debt isn't being forgiven, it's being PAID. Who's paying? The Federal government. Who funds the Federal government? The taxpayer. In other words, it's a massive transfer of wealth, from the Remora class to the Sharks. Those of us who eat what we kill - from the fry cook who didn't go to college; to me, the guy who was a CEO and also went to college on student loans, but paid his off like he was obligated to - are stuck paying for this criminally stupid scheme.

Welcome to Joe Biden's America.

Maybe some of these hapless, unwitting Remora never do figure out that they're bottom-feeding suckers. Maybe they never do realize that they're living off the Sharks, that their smack-on-the-forehead, well-golly-will-ya-look-at-what-I-found-in-my-pocket good fortune came at the expense of someone else's initiative, pluck, and labor.

In other words, maybe they're just that stupid.

Others do figure it out, however. They may start out not realizing it, but pretty soon they do. And you know what? They don't care. Because they have no incentive to be a Shark. They've been conditioned to be bottom-feeding suckers, living off the efforts of others. They've been conditioned to be a Remora.

But it's the rest of the Remora class that are the most insidious. These are the ones that know exactly what they're doing from the get. It's their goal to be a Remora. It's their intent to never be Sharks. Oh, they're smart enough - most anyone is. They're capable of the work - most everyone is. No, for them, the Remora life is a grift.

An excellent example of this type of Remora is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. You know her as AOC. You probably think she's dumb, because she says really dumb things. She's not dumb. She doesn't know much; that's true. Her grasp of things like education, economics, energy, foreign policy, is as weak as a Joe Biden air-handshake. But she's smart. Smart enough to play the system.

Smart enough to play you.

She got a degree from a pretty prestigious private college; never mind that she didn't learn much, except how to tend bar and how to dance. She then got herself elected to Congress by promising free stuff to poor people - in other words, by offering to make Remora out of them. Her current income is definitely Shark-worthy. But she's no Shark.

See, she doesn't work for it. Never sponsored a bill. Hell, she showed up at a protest, pretended to be arrested, and had to fake getting handcuffed. She's got the best benefits going. She gets enough in donations to buy fancy designer dresses, plaster them with Socialist slogans, and wear them to tony society balls that you and I couldn't get an invitation to no matter who we bribed.

Think she's not smart? On her website, she sells kitsch with anti-capitalism slogans. SELLS it, for money. And people buy that shit. Let that sink in.

And guess what? Remember that prestigious college she went to? How did she fund it? That's right, student loans. And guess what?

The Sharks are gonna pay off $10,000 of those loans for our favorite professional Remora.

The problem with all three types of Remora - the unwitting buffoon Remora; the reluctant-at-first Remora who eventually figure it out, but remain Remora; and the professional grifter Remora - is that they have zero incentive to stop being Remora, and become Sharks. The Democrats give them every reason to permanently remain in the Remora class, and to forego the opportunity to move into the Shark class.

For it is an opportunity: to break the chains of dependency, become your own person, enjoy the pride and satisfaction of knowing you made your own way in the world; and, more than anything, to have unlimited upside, being able to go as far as your brains, your drive, your willingness to work hard will take you. And to do it all honestly, with integrity.

But at the same time the Democrats are creating more and more incentives for people to become and remain Remora, they are discouraging people from becoming and remaining Sharks. By increasingly burdening the Sharks with these inequitable wealth transfers, disincentivizing hard work, increasing taxes on individual initiative, they are discouraging expansion of the Shark class.

So the Democrats are upsetting the balance of nature, by increasing the number of Remora in the eco-system relative to the number of Sharks. What's the outcome when that happens in nature?

Well, scientists (the real ones, not the guys like Tony Fauci) are already concerned about how well the Remora are gonna fare long-term, because in the world's oceans, sharks are becoming endangered.

So, too, in the U.S. (and in Canada, and Australia), Sharks are becoming endangered. And that endangers the Remora. Because when there aren't enough Sharks for the Remora to suck off of - or, when the Sharks don't collectively have enough left to feed all the Remora what they think (or have been led to believe) they're entitled to, the Remora will begin to die off.

Or - and this will work in my analogy; it wouldn't work in the ocean - they'll figure out that they'll have to become Sharks to survive. They'll figure out that it's time to say a big, hearty FU to the Democrats, and vote in leaders who will stop creating incentives to become Remora, and start creating incentives to become Sharks. Leaders who will stop taking from the Sharks and giving to the Remora.

Now, there's another, quicker path to this equilibrium, and I offer it for consideration by all my fellow Sharks.

We don't have to wait for the Remora class to get hungry, and decide they've had enough, that it's high time they become Sharks.

See, we're the effing apex predators here, am I right? We can do what some species of sharks do in the ocean. Namely ...

We can eat the Remora.

Think about it.

The Kansas Vote: I Don't Think It Means What You Think It Means

In the wake of last week's spate of primary elections that saw voters in five states head to the polls, pundits on the national cable news outlets - including conservative Fox News - were focused on ... Kansas, of all places. Not 2020 swing states like Arizona or Michigan, which also held primaries that day, but Kansas, which went for Donald Trump in 2020 by a 56-42 margin, with the former President carrying all but five of the state's 105 counties.

Why?

On the ballot in Kansas was Amendment 2, which related to abortion. In a nutshell, all the amendment would have done would have been to eliminate the right to an abortion from the state's constitution - a "right" that was put there by the state Supreme Court - and place the power to regulate abortion in the hands of the people, through their duly elected legislature (and subject to the veto power of their duly elected Governor), rather than leave that right in the hands of a largely unelected group of seven judges.

However, the amendment was couched in language that confused many of the few voters who bothered to read its actual language. And the opposition movement - which drew thousands of supporters from both coasts - used a campaign of lies to battle the amendment. Yard signs said, "Vote No - Stop the Ban," even though the amendment would not have banned abortion by any stretch of one's paranoid imagination. Campaign ads featured more lies, and scare tactics. Mailbox stuffers bore dire warnings reminiscent of the kinds of religious tracts handed out by the Westboro Baptist Church loonies. The mayor of Kansas City, Missouri - a little despot who let his mandate powers go to his head in 2020, to the point that he came to see himself as the sovereign of the entire metro area - crossed the state line to knock on doors to persuade Kansas suburbanites to vote no.

Uninformed voters took to Facebook to proclaim that a vote for the amendment meant that a pregnant woman couldn't terminate an ectopic pregnancy, which - if one actually understands what an ectopic pregnancy is - is so laughable a falsehood that the only people who would fall for it probably shouldn't be having children in the first place.

In the end, the campaign of lies was a smashing success. Nearly two-thirds of voters voted "No," and the amendment failed. Thus the Kansas Supreme Court remains sovereign over all Kansans, a sobering fact that could have implications that make this Kansan shudder (and consider moving outside the state he has called home for 62 of his 64 years).

So, back to the national news pundits. All eyes were on Kansas, because, in their deep analytical view, the Kansas vote is a harbinger of things to come in the November mid-terms. They reckon that, in a post-Dobbs world, the pro-abortion-on-demand crowd (and let's face it, that's what they are; no lipstick-on-a-pig terminology like "pro-choice" here, please) is so up in arms, so rabid, that they'll come out in force across the land, and the Dems will retain control of the House and the Senate.

Good, I say. Keep thinking that. Because the Kansas vote doesn't mean what you think it means.

First, those pundits are sitting there in Washington and New York, not understanding the dynamics of the Kansas vote. They don't know how the amendment was worded; heck, they didn't even read it themselves. (I did.) They themselves referred to it as a "ban." So they don't know that a number of voters voted against it because they were confused, and that large numbers voted against it because they were swayed by the campaign of lies.

See, most voters - and especially Democrats - don't read source documents. They vote on the basis of the news they watch, campaign ads, and maybe yard signs and mailbox stuffers. They vote with their hearts, not their heads.

Now, you may be crying "foul," especially if you're a Democrat. How can I say that "especially Democrats" don't read source documents, and instead base their vote on the news?

Easy. The covid pandemic gave me all the evidence I need to make that assertion with a high confidence interval. You watched the news and panicked; I dug into the data and did not. I called out the media for their hysteria on the basis of sound research using source documents and real data. You bought the hype. And by and large, the people that bought into the hype hook, line and sinker, the ones who panicked the most, were on the left, while the skeptics were on the right. Dems believe what their beloved media outlets tell them.

The pundits don't get all that. They think that these were informed voters who went into that vote eyes wide open. They were not. They were emotional voters fueled by misinformation who reacted to it.

The second thing the pundits don't get is the numbers. Again, I look at the data. If the Kansas amendment vote really were a harbinger of things to come in November, that would have played out in the numbers in other races in the state. Let's look at some of those races.

Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat, is running for re-election. She won her primary handily, winning 94% of the Dem vote against a challenger most of us have never heard of. Her opponent, Republican Attorney General Derek Schmidt, also easily won his primary, but by a narrower margin: 81% to 19% over an equally relatively unknown challenger.

However, let's look at the vote count, and here's where it gets interesting: Schmidt got 367,604 votes to Kelly's 264,857. Kelly's opponent got just over 17,000 votes, so in total, the Dems had about 282,000 votes on offer. Yet you know they came out in droves to vote on the abortion amendment, so low turnout on the blue side wasn't a factor. Yet Schmidt got nearly 100,000 more votes than the total votes cast by Democrats. And his primary opponent got another 88,000 votes.

Think Laura Kelly views the amendment vote as a harbinger of things to come in the fall? Think again. Her camp hustled up more than 5,000 signatures on a petition to get a far-right state legislator's name on the ballot as an Independent in the general election, in hopes of splitting the Republican vote. Why? Because she knows she can't beat Schmidt in a fair fight.

See, Kelly burned her bridges in 2020 by acting like a little tyrant, wielding her mandate powers using false information (yes, the same false information her Democrat followers swallowed whole, without questioning the data provided by her KDHE Director - but which data I dug into, and debunked), and Kansans got sick of it. So, no more experiments with a Dem governor running this red state. Hence her resorting to dirty politics to try to split the vote and beat Schmidt. She'll have to hope that her Independent lackey can get about 170,000 votes. It's not likely, as he's less well-known than Schmidt's primary opponent was.

Oh, did I mention that Schmidt opposes abortion?

Then there's Kris Kobach. Remember him? Former Kansas Secretary of State, former Chairman of the Kansas Republican Party. Known for his strong stance against illegal immigration. Hated by the left. Lost the 2018 gubernatorial election to Laura Kelly. Rumored to have been considered for the post of "immigration czar" by President Trump.

Kobach ran in the primaries against first-term State Senator Kellie Warren for Attorney General. Kellie Warren: Nice. Suburbanite. Woman.

Kobach, who was seen as more conservative than Warren, won. Who won the Democrat primary?

Chris Mann, whoever the hell he is. Who was unopposed. No one else bothered to run, because the Dems know they'll be crushed in November.

See? The numbers show that, even though the Democrats came out in force to "stop the ban," and a number of Republicans who don't want a ban on abortion were swayed by the campaign of lies voted against the amendment, the Republican votes in the actual races still clearly point to a red wave in November.

Now, Kansas is a red state. But, across this great nation, there are two things I know.

First, there aren't likely to be a lot of abortion amendments on ballots across the country come November 8 (which, by the way, is my birthday, and I'm expecting one hell of a celebration).

And second, the issues that Americans care more about than abortion - the ones that touch every man, woman, and born child in this country - still demand change. Inflation is 9.1% year over year, and rising. GDP has contracted for two consecutive quarters. 401(k) balances are shrinking. Prices are rising nearly twice as fast as wages. Crime is soaring. Our southern border is wide open, and every state is now a border state. Property rights are becoming non-existent: a Portland homeowner recently listed his home for sale as-is, because it's occupied by squatters and he can't afford the legal fees to get them out. He went to the house to persuade them to leave, and they put him in the hospital. He's hoping an investor will take the risk, or will have the resources to remove them.

("Lack the resources to remove squatters from your property?" I'd call that an ammo shortage.)

More people - mostly young people - are dying of fentanyl overdoses, thanks to the free flow of drugs across our southern border, than died with covid. And more people died with covid under this administration than under the last, even though the last administration left this administration with vaccines, treatments, and a plan. Neither our President nor our Vice President can string two coherent sentences together, and we're the laughingstock of the world. We're afraid of our enemies, and our allies don't trust us. Our first family is corrupt to the core, but so are the agencies that should be investigating them. We're about to spend another trillion dollars in an inflationary environment, raise taxes in a recession, and increase IRS enforcement on people who can't afford to buy gas or groceries.

And these pundits think that, come fall, voters will forget all that and keep this party in power because some uninformed knuckleheads in Kansas voted against a poorly-worded amendment based on yard signs and mailbox stuffers?

Good. Keep thinking that.

Covid Don't Care

Pardon the poor grammar. Yes, my Mom taught me better.

It finally happened: The Curmudgeon caught the 'rona. My number finally came up. I'm officially one of the cool kids. I was starting to feel left out.

(Forgive me for the "cool kids" comment; I'm sensitive to the fact that many have lost loved ones to covid. And the flu. And heart disease. And cancer. And suicide. And auto accidents. And a lot of other things that kill people. It was just starting to feel like I was the only person I knew that hadn't had covid yet, and now I have.)

I made it through the initial wave in the spring of 2020, when we shut everything down to flatten the curve. Then the bigger wave that summer, after we re-opened. Then the much larger wave in the winter of 2020-2021, when New York and California shut down again. I made it through the Delta wave in the fall of 2021, and the massive Omicron spike last winter. Then, the second Omicron variant got me.

And I made it through all that as someone who didn't really take any precautions. I traveled quite a bit in the first three months of 2020, visiting San Francisco, Austin, and Florida on business, going on a cruise, and vacationing in Hawaii. (I actually may have had covid in March of 2020, but it was diagnosed as influenza "and this nasty virus we've been seeing going around.")

Once covid hit and restrictions started being put in place, I largely ignored them. When the Governor of Kansas ordered everyone to stay home for two weeks beginning in late March, 2020, except to go to the doctor or the grocery store, I continued to take my dogs to the park every day. If I heard of a "non-essential" business that re-opened early in defiance of the shutdown order, I patronized them to show support, because I thought the shutdown was BS. When things re-opened, we began to eat out again, two or three times a week. When mask mandates were put in place, I wore one as little as I could get away with. When they expired in some jurisdictions in the Kansas City metro, but not in others, I shopped and dined out in those jurisdictions that had dropped them, and avoided the others.

I continued to travel, for both business (although a lot less than I used to) and pleasure, including a trip to Mexico. I took 40 flights during the TSA mask mandate, and I rarely wore a mask on board the plane or in the airport. I never got hassled about it. I didn't put my mask on at the airport until I got ready to clear security, and once I did, it came off while I sat and waited for my flight, only going on again during boarding. As soon as the flight attendants sat down for taxi and takeoff, my mask came down, and it stayed down throughout the flight as I sipped water and nibbled almonds, or at least pretended to. It only came back up during deplaning. Once out of the jetway, it came down again as I either changed planes or exited the airport. I didn't wear one while checking into hotels - I usually had my room already assigned, and a digital key on my phone, so I just went straight to my room, bypassing the front desk.

During the first big wave in the summer of 2020, we drove to New Mexico for vacation. There was a mandatory 14-day quarantine for out-of-state visitors, which I ignored. At one state park, we got stopped by police, who noticed our Kansas tags. They simply asked us to leave the park - they had no more interest in enforcing a stupid rule than we had in complying with it. No one else asked about our out-of-state tags, and our VRBO landlords said nothing about the quarantine requirement.

Once the vaccines became available, I was in no rush to get vaccinated. I knew that the vaccines would not prevent covid, long before Delta exposed that truth through widespread breakthrough infections. How did I know this? Simple: I understand what 95% efficacy means. I also knew that, given all the risk factors, my odds of getting covid were probably about 8% without the vaccine, and about 5% with it (that was before Delta reduced the efficacy rate). And my odds of being hospitalized or dying if I got it were also very low, given my risk factors. So I wasn't afraid of the vaccine; I merely thought, why bother?

In other words, for two years, I thumbed my nose at covid. Then covid said, "Tag - you're it!"

Okay, time for a sidebar.

Now here's another big reveal: The Curmudgeon finally did get vaccinated, in July-August of 2021. Why?

Certainly not because of health considerations. My "why bother?" view toward the vaccines has never changed. I still don't think I needed to get it to prevent covid (that's rather obvious now). I may or may not have needed to get it to avoid serious illness; we'll never really know, though I suspect that at least for some, the vaccines are effective in preventing serious illness. I don't think this recent bout would have landed me in the hospital had I not been vaccinated. Of course, I can't know that.

When the Delta variant first reared its ugly head in the summer of 2021, the hysteria accompanying it rapidly grew beyond the pale. I anticipated new restrictions being put in place, including vaccination requirements for things like domestic air travel, something that was hinted at by one airline CEO. I had a business trip coming up in late August. I didn't want to get stranded out of state, only to have a mandate put in place while I was gone, and not be able to fly home until I got the two shots, a month apart, then waited the two additional weeks to meet the "fully vaccinated" definition. (Happily, that never happened.)

I also knew that, even if those restrictions didn't materialize, there were already vaccine requirements for things I'd eventually want to do, like cruising and international travel (we already had a Transatlantic cruise departing from Barcelona booked in October 2022, and we've been itching to get back to cruising, something we've done more than 20 times). So I knew that, eventually, I'd get vaccinated.

Meticulous researcher that I am, the more I studied the vaccines, the less concerned I became about them. Interestingly, much of that research came as people tried to convince me - I'm not sure why - that the vaccines were dangerous. I won't go into great detail regarding that research here, but suffice it to say that it was laughably easy to debunk everything I was sent or that I read regarding the dangers of the vaccines. If anyone who has read this blog knows anything about me by now, they know I'm a math guy, and simple math overwhelmingly refutes the notion that the vaccines are as dangerous as their harshest critics would have us believe. Ironically, that's the same math that I used to combat so many of the myths about covid, in posts that those same people read and wholeheartedly agreed with.

I'll address the whole question of the vaccines in another post for another day, but it comes down to this: they don't prevent covid, not at all. In fact, unless you're in a real at-risk category, and maybe even if you are, they don't really change your odds of getting it. They may reduce your chances of serious illness or death, especially if you are in an at-risk category, though read on for some thoughts about that. But certainly, if I were in an at-risk category, I'd roll the dice on the assumption that maybe they would reduce my chances. You take all the help you can get, right?

On the flip side, for the vast, vast, vast majority of people, they aren't dangerous. They have their risks for young people, especially young males, though we now know that contracting covid poses those same risks to those same demographics, if not a little bit worse. So maybe, just maybe, the balance of the equities bears taking the risk. We also know that there are ways of mitigating that risk, such as adjusting the timing of doses. In any event, we further know that, either way, it's largely unnecessary, because the long-term risk that covid presents to the young and healthy is minimal.

So I really wish that all the vaccine proselytizing would stop, on both sides. If you believe that getting vaccinated is the right decision for you, do it. Say so, even, but stop there. Stop trying to convince everyone else that it's the right decision for them, that it prevents covid (because it doesn't), that it prevents serious illness or death (because it may or may not), and just let it be the right decision for you. It doesn't have to be the right decision for everybody. Just like getting the flu vaccine, or taking sugar in your coffee, or eating sushi, or getting circumcised. Fauci has enough acolytes.

Likewise, if you believe that it's not the right decision for you, don't do it. In fact, if you think the vaccine is dangerous, that it's a killer, that it causes HIV, that it'll make you grow a third arm out of your forehead, fine - believe that. But just say that it's not for you. Drop the crusade of trying to convince the world that it's going to kill them. Because you've already lost that battle: you're about 5 billion people behind, and they're still alive and kicking. (If you're really convinced you're right, by the way, you need to be stockpiling food and ammo like a fiend, because if 5 billion people worldwide - 63% of the population - suddenly die, Stephen King's "The Stand" is going to look like a Nicholas Sparks novel.)

Enough with the vaccine sidebar. Let's get back to The Curmudgeon's bout with the 'rona.

My lovely wife and I were in Siesta Key, Florida. By the way, if you're going to wind up having to isolate somewhere with covid, I highly recommend Siesta Key. It's a beautiful place, and you can walk on the beach and soak up all the vitamin D your little immune system desires.

We flew in on a Saturday - our first flight since a judge struck down the CDC's extension of the TSA mask mandate - so we flew maskless. But, as I said earlier, that was hardly a change for me, as I spent little time with a mask on when I flew while the mandate was in place. We went to our condo, went out to dinner, went to the beach Sunday, got groceries, went to lunch and dinner. Then, I spent most of Monday in the pool, as I had gone for a week-long swimming class.

Late Monday, I started to get a mild sore throat. Now, it's been a very long time since I spent hours in a swimming pool, getting water in my sinuses and ears. I'm also prone to sinus infections - I get one or two a year. And I'm so familiar with the symptoms that I can self-diagnose: for me, they start with a sore throat, usually in the evening, becoming worse overnight, to the point that my sleep is interrupted. (Check.) The sore throat lasts through the next day, in this case, Tuesday. (Check.) Then, it goes away, and I start to get sinus congestion and a runny nose the next day, with maybe some mild body aches, and chills at bedtime. (Check.) (This time, I also seemed to be a little more achy, and to get tired earlier in the evening, but again, I was swimming all day, which I wasn't used to.) Finally, the congestion moves into my chest, and I develop a cough. (Check.)

So familiar is this symptom progression to me that I usually just go to the doctor and say, "I have a sinus infection, and I need a Z-pack" (Zithromax, an antibiotic that generally knocks the infection out in a few days). My doc is really good about complying. When I'm traveling, I sometimes have to plead my case, and I occasionally get a holistic medicine-type who gives me the Madame Curie lecture about the dangers of antibiotics, and I have to suffer until I get home to my doc, who's been practicing medicine longer than those yahoos have been on the earth. Once, on a cruise, I went to the ship's doctor and gave him the I-have-a-sinus-infection-and-I-need-a-Z-pack pitch. The doctor, a Colombian, gave me a wry smile and asked if he could give me a second opinion. "Sure," I agreed. He checked me out, then said, "You have a sinus infection. I'm going to give you a Z-pack."

So, I thought I got a sinus infection. Why? Because I get them all the time. It's spring, and I figured maybe it was related to seasonal allergies. I was going from our climate in Kansas, where the weather had been crazy - 70 degrees one day, snowing three days later, 70 degrees again three days after that, lather, rinse, repeat - to the Florida Gulf Coast, where it was a predictable 85 degrees every day. And, I had that pool water up my nose and stuck in my ears every day.

Only this time, my wife got it too. And she got it hard. She had a fever most of the week. (I may have, except I was getting the headaches that usually accompany my sinus infections, so I was taking Advil, which would have reduced my fever, whereas she was letting her fever burn out.) And her aches were worse than mine, but again, she wasn't taking Advil. And I was exercising every day, some days forcing myself to go to the pool, because I'd paid for the class.

On Friday, after the class ended, we were getting our things together to fly home Saturday. My wife thought we should test ourselves for covid; even though it wasn't required to fly, we were supposed to attest that we hadn't tested positive for covid before boarding our flight. (A good friend asked, "Why would you test?" I explained our reasons, but in hindsight, as I think about it, the better answer to that question is, "Why on earth wouldn't you?")

We purchased home covid tests from Walgreen's, took them, and ... we both tested positive. I couldn't believe it. I hadn't lost my sense of smell or taste, I didn't have any of the other covid symptoms I'd heard about - in fact, my symptoms were firmly indicative of an all-too-familiar sinus infection, and I was convinced that was all this was. I suspected the tests, and insisted that we do another, since we had extras. We did, and got the same result.

So we decided to isolate for another week in Florida. Our condo was booked for the next week, and our rental car company was sold out for the following week. So we had to find another condo, and rent a car from another company, and change our flights, and ask my wife's Mom to watch our dogs for another week, and otherwise do some schedule-juggling.

We came home the following weekend. It's now been nearly three weeks since the onset of symptoms, and more than two weeks since that positive test, and a week since we got home. My wife is fully recovered, but I'm still battling a cough, though it seems to be getting better. I did go to an urgent care clinic in Florida, and they put me on a steroid and an antibiotic, which seemed to do pretty much nothing for me. (Note that the clinic diagnosed me with "covid and sinusitis," which is a sinus infection. And sometimes my sinus infections result in a cough that lingers for a few weeks, so this isn't necessarily unusual. By the way, when I asked the doctor at the clinic if they needed to test me again, she said they actually recommend against it. Why, I wonder? I found that curious.)

So, now that I'm a card-carrying member of the covid club, herewith are my observations.

1. It is just a matter of time. We are probably all at risk of getting covid at some point. Vaxxed or unvaxxed, boosted or unboosted, masked or unmasked. Covid don't care. It's here to stay, and we're going to have to live with it. It is entirely indiscriminate. In a post a year or so ago, I said that the virus itself is the superspreader, not some event. That's absolutely true. I also used an analogy based on some words of wisdom from my wife. We were watching news coverage of flooding on the Mississippi River. Residents of a small town in Missouri were stacking sandbags on the riverbank trying to protect the town. My wife observed, "You know, that river's been going pretty much wherever it wants to go for more than a million years, and it's going to keep going wherever it wants to go for the next million years, and all the sandbags in the world won't change that."

So it is with covid. Covid don't care. It's gonna go where it wants to go, and all the masks and vaccines and social distancing and Plexiglas and shutdowns and arrows on supermarket aisle floors in the world aren't going to change that.

2. To wit: based on what we know about the incubation period of the second Omicron variant, there's a good chance that I was exposed at a physical therapy appointment on the Friday before we left for Florida. And the physical therapy facility requires that masks be worn at all times, by all patients, therapists, and staff.

Now, the mask brigade will pooh-pooh that idea, and insist that my exposure came while traveling maskless. "See?" they'll cry with sanctimonious glee. "That's what you get for that judge striking down the mask mandate!" Well, not so fast. First, that would mean an incubation period of two days or less, which is inconsistent with what the "experts" say about Omicron II (the same "experts" that say we should still be wearing masks on planes). Second, as previously noted, I've never really worn a mask while traveling by plane. I flew during the OG phase, the first summer wave, the first winter spike, the Delta wave, and the first Omicron spike, all with my mask mostly down around my chin. True, for those last two waves I was vaccinated, but we saw how well that worked for me, right?

Also, there's the experience of some of my friends. I have a friend who isn't vaccinated, and has never worn a mask, as far as I know, and she had both the OG and Delta variants. I also have friends who were absolutely diligent about mask-wearing. And yet, around the end of 2020, they came down with covid, while my bare face went unscathed. And I'm guessing that, if they got on a plane today, they'd be wearing masks. I know other religious mask-wearers who've gotten covid twice.

3. The caveat here is that, besides my belief that masks are ineffective, I don't believe the experts know squat about incubation periods, among other things. Maybe I did get it on the plane to Florida. (I rather doubt it, knowing what I know about air circulation on airplanes, exposure times, etc.) Maybe I got it in the airport. Maybe I got it at a restaurant. Or maybe I did get it at PT, with my mask on. Who knows? And who cares? Covid don't care. Neither do I. I got it. And no amount of contact tracing in the world could ever prove where I got it. And I personally don't think we know what the incubation period is for any of the variants. Because we can't prove when someone was actually exposed.

4. The vaccine did not prevent me from getting it. My friend who is unvaccinated got it. Her natural immunity from getting it once didn't do much for her, because she got it again. I personally know people who are religious mask-wearers, are vaccinated and boosted, and have had it twice. Covid don't care.

Will I get boosted? Not for health reasons, because it won't do any more good than the original round did. Like I said, I know people who are vaccinated and boosted, and have gotten it once or even twice. Neither the vaccine, nor the booster, nor their natural immunity did squat for them. Covid don't care. It's no different than the flu or a cold.

I know a guy who I used to ride bikes with. He still rides, so he's in pretty good shape, though I understand he has some heart condition. But he's younger than I am. He apparently got covid recently also. He's a firm believer in masks. He's vaccinated and boosted, but "hasn't gotten around to getting the second booster yet." Yet he encourages people to do so. Why? His triple-vax and mask-wearing didn't keep him from getting covid. Does he think one more dose is going to do the trick? Covid don't care.

Moreover, in spite of the fact that he's younger and fitter than I am, and triple-vaxxed, he apparently had it worse than I did. He described his symptoms as similar to mine, only with "severe body aches - the worst symptom so far." I sure didn't have "severe body aches." I went swimming for four hours every day, and walking on the beach after that.

The answer is that yes, I'll get another dose, but only because Spain requires that my most recent dose be within the last 270 days in order to enter the country in October. I'm already well beyond that, so sometime between now and then, I'll need another shot, unless the rules change. Because, you know, "the science" definitively shows that if you've had a dose in the last 270 days, something magical happens.

The bottom line is that my number finally came up. It would have come up if I'd worn a mask all the time, it would have come up if I were boosted - even double-boosted. And you know what? It's probably gonna come up again. Maybe next year. Heck, maybe this year. It's just something that we're going to have to learn to live with. Like those pesky sinus infections that I get on a regular basis. You don't panic, you don't shut down the world, you don't cover your face, you don't plaster Anthony Fauci's mug all over every TV screen in America. You deal with it - and you move on.

5. Is everybody going to eventually get covid? I'll bet not. There are probably people who have never had the flu. I have a friend who has pretty much never worn a mask, will never get vaccinated, and hasn't had covid. He rode his Harley to Sturgis in 2020 (superspreader!), he eats out all the time, he travels (not by plane, but that's personal preference), he goes out in public. And he hasn't had so much as a cold.

Maybe it's his immune system. Maybe it's the luck of the draw. Maybe it's math: there have been about a half-billion cases of covid in the world, out of a global population of nearly 8 billion. Sure, there have probably been a ton of cases that have been unreported, either because the people didn't know they had it, they didn't test, or they tested at home and never went to the doctor. A bunch more have had it twice, maybe more.

Just in the U.S. alone, there have been 84 million reported cases, but that's still just 25% of the population. And note that cases were overstated in 2020 for political reasons, using inflated cycle thresholds to increase positive results, as reported in this blog. But regardless of any noise in the data, it's a fact that most of the U.S. population hasn't had covid. And over 20% of the population - nearly 73 million - haven't had a vaccine dose. And it's fairly safe to say that there's a good correlation between that number and the number of people who never or seldom wore masks.

So there's a good chance that a quarter of the population will never get covid. Is that scientific? Nope, it's a guess, albeit an educated one, based on some math. And you know what? I don't care whether it's scientific or not.

You know what else?

That's right. Covid doesn't, either. Because it's not out to get you. It just ... is. And your number is either gonna come up, or it's not. If it doesn't, it won't be because you're wearing a mask, or because you're vaxxed, boosted, double-boosted, wrapped in bubble wrap, or have a shrine to Anthony Fauci in your backyard. And if it does, it won't be because you flew on planes, went on cruises, rode your Harley to Sturgis, took vacations, and lived your life. Either way, it'll be because ...

Covid don't care.

The Friendly Skies Return

By now you’ve heard that a Federal judge has struck down the CDC’s ridiculous two-week extension of the mask mandate on airplanes and other public transportation, and in airports and other transportation terminals. The mandate was set to expire on April 18 before the CDC extended it to May 3, but the judge’s ruling took effect on April 18, so the mandate effectively ended then.

The judge ruled that the CDC failed to provide any justification for its decision to extend the mandate, and did not follow proper rule-making procedures for a federal agency. In so doing, it overstepped its authority. The judge was ruling on a lawsuit brought by a small number of individuals; however, she noted that it would be impossible to end the mandate selectively for that group. Thus the only remedy was to vacate the decision entirely, ruling that “a limited remedy would be no remedy at all.”

As pilots and flight attendants announced the decision mid-flight shortly after it was made public, passengers cheered the decision, consistent with polls that have shown that a significant majority of Americans oppose the continuation of the mandate. However, the reaction of a minority was predictably vocal – and entirely devoid of logic.

One doctor tweeted his complaint that the airlines didn’t wait “another month or two” to comply with the order, which makes zero sense, since the CDC extension was only for two weeks. Why would they extend the requirement weeks beyond the CDC mandate?

Several people opposed to the judge’s decision declared that they would boycott the airlines that complied with the order, and fly on their competitors instead.

Just one problem with that strategy: every U.S. airline announced immediately after the judge’s decision that masks would heretofore be optional on all domestic and most international flights. So good luck with that. As one friend of mine suggested, perhaps those folks can hop in their electric cars and drive across the country. They’ll just have to stop and charge up every couple of hours.

Another woman lamented that the decision came even as “the equivalent of a plane-load of passengers die every day of COVID.” Well, U.S. deaths from COVID the day the decision was handed down totaled 70, and the day before they totaled 104, so those would be pretty small planes. And considering that about 45,000 passenger flights per day take off in the U.S., I guess the odds are pretty good.

You’re infinitely more likely to wreck your car on the way to the airport than you are to get COVID on your flight and die.

But the best comments were from those who cried that a judge’s order “shouldn’t take the place of the legislative branch.” This illustrates the brilliance of those who made that argument – and there were a good many of them, which should frighten us all, because they undoubtedly vote, and probably even procreate – for three reasons.

First, the CDC is not the legislative branch. It’s an arm of the executive branch. These geniuses don’t even understand the three branches of government, and they’re griping about one of them. Checks and balances, anyone? Moreover, they don’t understand – nor do they care – that the legislative branch never had a say in whether we all had to wear masks on planes or not. In other words, since we the people elect the legislature to make law on our behalf, we the people never had a say.

(One person tweeted that “you should be really, really concerned that the Courts are effectively taking away power from the federal government.” Ummm … this was a federal judge. Maybe you should be really, really concerned about your proclivity for tweeting without knowing what the hell you’re talking about. Bless your heart.)

Second, these lemmings are opposed to a judge making a decision they have to live with, but they’re perfectly okay with an executive agency making an unsupported, arbitrary and capricious decision that they’re subject to? Good on ya, comrade. Again, I’ll take an order of checks and balances with a large side of justice, please. Make that to go – I’ve got a flight to catch.

Third – and this is the richest irony of all – these same people were delighted, thrilled, over-the-moon, every time a judge overturned a decision made by President Donald J. Trump’s administration. But now that a judge has overturned a decision made by the jack-booted stormtroopers of the Biden administration, they’re aghast. It’s beyond the pale. It cannot stand.

And their tears are like the sweetest nectar.

Look, many of us put up with wearing masks for a very long time, as the CDC extended the mandate again, and again, and again, and again, even as mask mandates in all states were being eliminated, and cases, hospitalizations and deaths were falling to well within endemic range. An isolated minority made a scene over it, but most of us just complied with it, because it was required, and we wanted or needed to fly.

And we all knew that it would end at some point, just like the state mandates ended, the county mandates ended, and the city mandates ended. No, this isn’t different because people are all sitting together on a plane. It’s no more crowded than many restaurants in major cities. No, it isn’t different because the passengers come from all over the world. So do people you encounter every day, once they get off of planes. We live in a connected world.

So instead of insisting that your will be imposed on the rest of us, how about you do you, and we’ll do us? You can still wear your mask. We won’t judge. We’ll be polite. And if your mask is that effective, you really don’t need for us to be wearing one, too. (If you do, then just don a second one. Fauci said it was a good idea, after all.)

And if you still don’t like it? Then, by all means, boycott the airlines. It’s just that you’ll have to boycott them all. So take Amtrak. (Oops – they made masks optional, too.) Or a bus. (Oops again.) Take an Uber cross-country. (Oops.) Walk, for all I care.

I’m just glad to have that empty seat next to me.

How Markets Work, and a Truth Bomb

Look, I'm getting sick and tired of hearing the White House spewing forth bovine excrement about how reversing the decision to halt the Keystone XL pipeline - a decision that Joe Biden made unilaterally on his first day in office, with a boastful flourish - wouldn't affect gas prices at the pump for years, because it would take a long time for Keystone XL to become operational and start delivering oil. Such bovine excrement ignores how markets work. So let me explain how they work, and in so doing, illustrate why Joe Biden and Jen Psaki are idiots.

Wait a minute - let's not over-complicate things. Actually, Joe Biden and Jen Psaki are idiots because their mommas each raised an idiot. Alright, that's not fair. Joe Biden is an idiot, but Jen Psaki is actually probably very bright. She just either doesn't have an earthly clue how markets work, or she's a pathological liar. Probably both.

There, now we've got that out of the way. Let's turn to how markets work. If you lean left, you'll want to pay close attention, because you've probably been spreading this bovine excrement, and you need to stop it, because you're wrong, and it makes you look like an idiot, too. And if you don't lean left, please share this with your friends who do, because friends don't let friends look like idiots.

Markets trade on future expectations. Take stocks for example. Stocks don't trade on the underlying companies' past performance. Consider Kumquat, a hypothetical tech company that makes widgets, ubiquitous products that everyone uses. There are even people who love Kumquat's products so much, they're called "Kumquat fanboys" (which is probably a sexist term). They have Kumquat stores where everyone goes to buy those widgets. People line up at the Kumquat store to buy the latest Kumquat widget when it comes out: everybody has to upgrade their Kumquat 10 to a Kumquat 11, etc.

Now, Kumquat's stock doesn't trade on how many widgets Kumquat sold last quarter. No, it trades on how many widgets Kumquat expects to sell next quarter, or next year. Kumquat's CEO will have a call with a bunch of Wall Street analysts, and he'll say the company is going to open X new Kumquat stores, and they're going to release the new Kumquat 12, which will do twice as many cool things as the Kumquat 11 did, and they expect to sell Y units of the Kumquat 12 at ZZZ dollars a unit, while still selling a bunch of units of the Kumquat 11 at a now-discounted price, blah, blah, blah.

It's all based on the future outlook. And based on that outlook, if it's rosier than last quarter's actual performance, Kumquat's stock price will go up. Even though - and this is important - even though Kumquat hasn't opened one of the promised new stores yet, or produced one new unit of the Kumquat 12.

Now, when the actual results come in, if Kumquat's projected earnings are below what they forecast for the quarter - known as an "earnings miss" - the stock might go down. Or, if the earnings are higher than forecast - an "earnings beat" - the price may go up. So it does respond to actual performance. But it's driven by future expectations, first and foremost, and adjusted after the fact based on results versus those expectations. In other words, the results are judged relative to the expectations. It's like beating the point spread vs. winning or losing the game.

Oil isn't a stock, but it trades the same way. If oil traders think something's going to happen that could lead to the future price of oil increasing, they'll bid up oil futures - derivatives contracts for forward delivery of "spot," or physical barrels of, oil. If they think the outlook for oil prices is negative, they'll bid oil futures prices down. Projected supply and demand are the primary factors oil futures traders look at. And spot oil prices, as well as gasoline prices, are influenced by oil futures prices.

Okay. So let's look at what happened to oil prices when Joe Biden was elected President in November 2020. Now, if you lean left, you're crying, "Foul! Joe Biden may have been elected in November 2020, but he didn't take office until January 2021, so he couldn't have influenced oil prices yet, because he wasn't yet in a position to make any decisions!"

To which I say, "Aha!" Because remember? Markets trade on expectations. Now that the election was over and we knew that Joe Biden was going to be President, the outlook for oil became negative. Joe Biden campaigned against domestic fossil fuel production. He said he wanted to put oil producers out of business. He was for the Green New Deal. He promised to kill the Keystone XL pipeline on his first day in office (and he did). So the oil traders said, "Ruh-roh. Domestic supply is going down. Keystone XL - even though it isn't even complete yet - isn't going to deliver the increased supply we expected it to when Donald Trump gave it the green light. Oil prices are going up, because OPEC is going to start gouging us." And they started bidding up the price of oil.

The graph below shows the price of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil, the benchmark for domestic oil prices, from the day before Biden was elected through March 7, 2022. Note that immediately after the election, oil prices started to rise. The Friday before the election, WTI was $36.97/barrel (bbl). By March 5, 2021 - about six weeks after Joe Biden was inaugurated, and signed the Executive Order killing Keystone XL - WTI was $66.08/bbl, an increase of 79%. By mid-July, crude had more than doubled from the pre-election day level (some of that had to do with normal summer demand). By late October, it was over $85/bbl. This was all before Putin even began amassing troops on the Ukrainian border.

Now, you could note that there was something else going on during this time: recovery from the COVID pandemic. And you'd be right, to some degree. The shutdowns were finally over, including the renewed California and New York shutdowns of December 2020. The vaccines were being rolled out. People were going on vacations again. So there's certainly a demand component involved.

However, the economy re-opened in May 2020 after the initial COVID shutdowns in March of that year. I took driving vacations in the summers of 2020 and 2021, and I went from Kansas City to Taos, New Mexico both years, so that's a pretty good frame of reference: same trip, same route. There was certainly more traffic in 2021 than in 2020. But there was lots of large truck traffic in 2020, and plenty of local traffic. Certainly demand was higher in 2021 than in 2020, but the price increase shown in the graph above could not have resulted from increased demand alone.

Let's look at oil prices in 2020, from the time the economy re-opened until the election, as seen in the graph below. The increase from the re-opening, around the beginning of June, to the peak of summer in late August, was less than $8/bbl - about 22%, but from a starting point of only $35/bbl or so. By the election, the price was back down below $37/bbl, and that was before California and New York shut down again. So even though demand went from virtually nil to a pretty healthy increase, we saw only a modest increase in oil prices. Why? Because the policies of the Administration in office at the time were decidedly friendly toward domestic oil production. From that, we can infer that increased demand due to COVID recovery (and summer travel) might account for a 20-25% increase in prices - admittedly, a crude guesstimate (pun intended). That leaves about a 50%-plus increase in 2021 that's attributable to Joe Biden's anti-fossil fuel policies.

Bottom line? Joe Biden owns the run-up in oil prices from the day he was elected until the day Vladimir Putin began amassing troops on the Ukrainian border. And he owns a piece of it since, because he has stubbornly refused to relent in his assault on domestic oil production. Let's face it: he was proud of those policies. He was bragging about the actions he took, at least until inflation started soaring, and he started getting pummeled in the polls. So why hide behind it now? Why point the finger at Putin now? Look, if this is "Putin's price hike," why are Biden's poll numbers falling further?

Markets trade on expectations. And since Biden was elected, oil prices have risen. They didn't rise under Trump, because oil traders expected oil-friendly policy, and thus that the future trajectory of oil prices would be lower, or at least stable. From Election Day 2020 forward, the expected trajectory has been up, up, up, because the effect of Biden's policies on supply was expected to be down, down, down. Putin's actions have exacerbated that. So has Biden's response (or lack thereof) to it. Going hat-in-hand to Iran, Venezuela, or Saudi Arabia will only drive prices even higher.

So that's why, if Biden announced a reversal of his Keystone XL decision, oil prices - and gas prices, which are based on oil prices - would drop immediately, even though the pipeline wouldn't deliver a drop of oil for about a year. (And no, Jen, you couldn't replace all the gas-powered cars with EVs before then.) Because markets trade on expectations.

A final word. Today, Jen said, in response to a reporter's question, that since Putin began amassing troops on the Ukrainian border in January, the price of a gallon of gas is up $0.75.

Well, what she didn't say is this: from the time Joe Biden was elected until the time Putin began amassing troops on the Ukrainian border, the price of a gallon of gas went up $1.18.

So whose price hike is worse?

An Open Letter to Volodymyr Zelenskyy

Dear President Zelenskyy,

America offers its prayers to you and the Ukrainian people. Regrettably, tragically, heart-breakingly, we can offer you little else.

Because, you see, unlike you, our own President is a coward.

You have seen this. While you stand in proud defiance against the naked aggression of Vladimir Putin, Joe Biden cowers in the face of it. Putin makes the obvious sabre-rattle of placing his nuclear forces on alert, and Joe Biden cancels a long-planned ICBM test, out of deference to what the world has now seen is an adversary far inferior to America's military might.

Biden's reaction should not be a surprise. You, and the rest of the world, watched as Joe Biden surrendered in shame to the Taliban last summer, sacrificing American lives and abandoning Americans and Afghan allies alike behind enemy lines, in spite of solemn promises to the contrary. And would that your brave countrymen had the materiel that we left in the hands of the Taliban!

Putin watched this unfold, too, and it no doubt emboldened him to take the action he is taking today. For this, Joe Biden bears no small responsibility for your current plight.

We Americans would rather pay more to fuel our cars and heat our homes than to continue to buy Russian oil that is tainted with the blood of your people. We realize, after all, how blessed we are to still have our cars and our homes.

But paying more is not even necessary: America's energy resources are abundant, and we have more than enough to not only supply our own needs, but to share with our European allies, thereby cutting off Putin's ability to fund his war machine, and thus completing the decimation of his economy and making him a pariah even among his own people.

However, Joe Biden cares more about appeasing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez than he cares about the horrors that might be visited upon the women of your country at the hands of Russian soldiers. So he continues to buy blood-tainted and ecologically "dirty" Russian oil rather than producing relatively "clean" oil here at home. And Ms. Ocasio-Cortez isn't intelligent enough to recognize the difference in the environmental impact about which she claims to care so much. (And, no matter what she may say about equality, she doesn't care about the fate of your women, either. She's too busy attending charity galas wearing expensive, donated designer gowns emblazoned with catchy slogans, and - ironically - making profits selling goods labeled with phrases condemning capitalism.)

Unlike you, Mr. President, Joe Biden is a career politician. He has spent his entire life in Washington, D.C., and it has corrupted him to the core. He cares only about his own political calculus, and how it can enrich him and his family. Unfortunately, whether you personally survive this war does not factor into his calculations. You cannot trust him, any more than you can trust Vladimir Putin.

But your survival matters to Americans. It matters because we long for a President like you, one that we can be proud of. One that will stand against aggression. One to whom the sovereignty of his country's borders matters. One who cares about his people, and stands with them. One who is a symbol of his nation, and not a mockery of it.

Unfortunately, Joe Biden can offer you little more than words, and in his present state, he doesn't even do a very good job of that. More than 74 million Americans wish we had a president that could offer you more, and I daresay that, today, a good many more than that have joined their number. Sadly, we can "only" offer our prayers now. But take heart, because prayer is a powerful thing. God is on your side, and that is a force that Vladimir Putin and Joe Biden together cannot overcome.

So we, the American people, will continue to pray. We pray for your continued strength, and for the deliverance of your great nation.

And, while we're on our knees, may God have mercy on Joe Biden's soul.

More Lies About Jobs Data

Today - March 4, 2022 - we got what looked like a very strong jobs report. Nonfarm payroll growth of 678,000 in February, with January's gain revised up to 481,000, December's at 588,000, and November's at 647,000. The unemployment rate at 3.8%. Average hourly earnings up 5.3%. That all sounds pretty darn good, right? No wonder the Biden Administration is crowing about their economic track record, how they've added 7.7 million jobs since they took office.

Not so fast.

As The Curmudgeon has noted before, politicians do precious little to "add" jobs, unless they hire interns and aides. (Bill Clinton was particularly good at that.) The private sector adds the jobs. The best politicians can do is to get the hell out of the way, cut regulations and not add new ones, and let businesses do their thing. And that's not the Biden Administration's style. They like to regulate.

Now - and this is a digression, so stay with me - the ultimate government interference in a business' operation would be to shut it down. Of course, legally, the government can't do that, unless the business is itself violating a law or regulation. The government has no Constitutional authority to shut down businesses.

Yet, in March 2020, that's exactly what the U.S. government did, en masse. It shut down a lot of businesses, and those businesses just stood by and let it happen. Here's where the digression ends.

How did that affect jobs? Well, in March 2020, nonfarm payrolls fell by nearly 1.7 million, the biggest drop on record, more than double the worst month of the Great Recession in 2008-09. And that was just a partial month's result; the government shutdown didn't hit until well into the month.

Then April came along, and said, "Hold my beer."

The April nonfarm payroll loss was a staggering, dumbfounding, jaw-dropping 20.7 million jobs. More than in all of the Great Recession.

(For reference, the economy had been humming along very nicely before that. Unemployment was at record lows, and payroll gains were averaging about 236k/mo. in the six months before the shutdown. And let's state right now, for the record, that not only was the shutdown wrong, and illegal, and unconstitutional, it was unnecessary, and did nothing to change the trajectory of the pandemic, or to save lives. That's been proven. If you believe otherwise, you need bandages on your knuckles.)

Now, two of the biggest states in terms of employment, New York and California, shut down again in December 2020 (what's the definition of insanity, again?), and as a result, nonfarm payrolls for the nation as a whole shed 306,000 jobs, because those states' job losses dwarfed all other states' combined job gains.

So, taking those three months of shutdowns together, the U.S. economy lost 22,668,000 jobs. Due to stupid, unnecessary, illegal, government-mandated business closures in response to a pandemic. Let that sink in.

Now, in all the months since April 2020, excluding December 2020, when California and New York decided to repeat the failed shutdown experiment, nonfarm payrolls have gained, in the aggregate -

20,544,000 jobs.

In other words, we haven't added one. damn. job. We're still more than two million jobs behind.

No wonder there are still help wanted signs everywhere. We've nowhere near caught up to where we were two years ago, much less accounted for the normal growth that should have occurred since then, plus inflationary growth spurred by excessive government spending over those two years. That should add up to at least the current 11 million job openings.

Moreover, since Joe likes to tout his big numbers (which are nothing more than replacements of jobs lost during the shutdown), let's look at some of the numbers replaced under Trump:

May 2020: 2.8 million jobs, June: 4.8 million, July: 1.7 million, August: 1.6 million, September: 716k, October: 680k.

As MC Hammer sang, "You Can't Touch This."

As for that 3.8% unemployment rate - it was 3.5% in February 2020, before the shutdown, under Trump. So we're still not fully recovered there yet, either.

Finally, that 5.3% payroll growth rate is great - except that the inflation rate is 7.5%. So real wage growth - adjusted for inflation - is negative, by more than two percentage points. That's why we're all feeling squeezed.

A final note. I was listening to a business news anchor interviewing one of President Biden's economic advisors, and the advisor kept touting all that the administration is doing to bolster up the supply side. Wait a minute - supply side economics? That's "trickle-down" economics, right? Didn't Joe just tell us in the SOTU the other night that trickle-down economics doesn't work? And yet his advisors are pushing it?

Glad to see the liberals abandoning the dark side, and coming to the light. Of course, they're not actually embracing supply-side economics, or we'd be drilling oil like mad. But it's nice to hear a liberal economist acknowledging that it's the right approach.