Why Some Are Turning Away From Liberalism

This video would be considered racist today.

I was watching some Police body cam videos the other day and it was interesting. You find yourself rooting for the Police most of the time.  It is interesting, but some people apparently feel they can negotiate their arrest. When the Policeman says, "you're under arrest!" they reply, "no, I'm not!"

It doesn't work that way.  While watching these bodycam videos, you come away with a newfound respect and sympathy for the Police.  They have a level of patience I could never achieve.  Frankly, I would have beaten or shot the suspects in many of these videos, early on, as they try to fight with me or pull that "Sovereign Citizen" crap.

Police chase videos are the same way.  Some jackass in a stolen car is going 140 MPH on the street and after they "PIT" maneuver him, the perp jumps out and runs away, only to be tackled by the cops.  Adrenalin is running high and the temptation is to beat the shit out of the guy.  Usually, they show some restraint. I would not be so kind.  Good thing I'm not a cop!

I mentioned to a Police officer about body cameras and whether he felt they hindered his job.  After all, if you punch a suspect on camera, you could get in trouble - and some Policemen do.  But he was supportive of body cameras as he felt they protected the Police from false accusations of Police brutality and also helped show the public how hard their job actually is.  It was an interesting take!

I ran into a former DC Metro officer and we were talking about the state of that once award-winning transit system.  When we lived in DC, the system was immaculately clean and fairly reliable.  Over time, it seemed, it just got better, with scheduled trains and lighted signage telling you when the next train was coming.  But there were pretty strict rules, however.  No food or drink was allowed on the Metro!  As a result, there was little or no litter, discarded wrappers or cups, rats, or track fires.

I recall, a few years after we left, a brouhaha erupted on social media (boo! hiss!) because an employee was ticketed for eating a sandwich on the train.  People who never lived in DC or rode the Metro weighed in with their uninformed opinions.  "No one should get a ticket for eating!  How do they expect us to remain hydrated if we can't drink!"   And as you might expect, the once spotless Metro system is now littered with garbage and you are better off standing up that sitting in a seat with someone's dinner spilled in it.

Most of us obey the rules because we understand why they exist.  Naturally, we are chagrined when we are caught breaking the rules.  No one likes getting a speeding ticket - but logical people realize there is no point arguing with a cop.  "Tell it to the Judge!" is a phrase as old as time.  And I have gotten many a speeding ticket and been "cuffed and stuffed" so I know how it goes.  It never pays off to argue with a cop - they won't let you go as a result.  Sometimes, if you talk nicely to them and explain yourself, it might work.  But once they say, "put your hands behind your back!" the time for talk has ended.

Recently, worldwide, there has been a shift rightward in politics as many look toward authoritarianism as a solution to perceived social problems.   I say, "perceived" as actual crime rates are down.  But if all you watch is Police body cam videos and Fox News, you might believe the criminals are taking over.  It is an echo of the past, when the Wiemar Republic was perceived as weak and people clamored for a strong-man to set things right.

California is usually ground zero for wacky Leftist thinking, and during CoVid,, they were letting criminals go free on appearance tickets.   There was talk about abolishing bail and they actually passed a law decriminalizing shoplifting for amounts under $995.  That law was recently rescinded.

Similarly, a homeless "crises" erupted on the West Coast as laws about camping in public spaces were relaxed.  People who played by the rules, stayed off drugs, went to work every day, and paid their taxes on time, felt that their rights were being subjugated to some drug-addicted bum.  At least that's the way some folks felt.

Throw in a few riots, looting, and a takeover of several city blocks, and people get the idea that government has lost its way.  And even though border crossings have decreased in recent years, some folks still feel they are being overwhelmed by refugees who often appear to have more rights than they do.  Never mind whether it is actually true or not, that is the way some folks feel.

In response to all of this, the Democrats come out with... preferred pronouns - which you'd better use, buster, or you'll lose your job and career!  Congratulations!  You are now one of the sainted homeless!

Again, that's the perception - that while we might have real problems, the Democrats are re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.  And worse yet, none of this is up for discussion.  Whether it is fair or not for a transgender person to compete in sports is a question you are not allowed to ask.  Whether minors should have hormone therapies or operations is also not up for discussion.  And we wonder why we lost the election.  Republicans paid attention to the concerns of voters while Democrats pandered to people who threatened not to vote.

Of course, all of these flames were fanned by foreign (Russian) influences.  And just as many were pushed further to the Right, many others were pushed further to the Left.  Republicans are clutching their peals over the murder of the United Healthcare CEO (Update on my Medicare journey- I am re-thinking using United Healthcare/AARP for supplemental insurance!).   What puzzles them is how so many people, particularly young people, seem to be cheering this on.

I noted before how assassination never works - and often backfires.  It seems the only result of this latest episode will be to increase security (and no doubt pay) for corporate CEOs.  Whether the murder of one man changes how our healthcare system works, seems less likely.  That doesn't mean there weren't real underlying issues involved. And funny how little effort is spent catching the serial murderer of hookers, while one CEO gets the entire FBI and State and City Police forces to act. (To be fair, they just caught the guy - over a decade-and-half later).  Police protection, like healthcare, is rationed - and the richer you are, the better off you will be, whether perpetrator or victim.

I recounted before how my detached bicep won't be repaired under my insurance, unless it affected my ability to work.  This was one of the things mentioned by "Luigi" - that medical care is only essential to your ability to be a productive citizen.  That is to say, of use to corporate America.  And of course, you should, as Elon Musk exhorts, have lots of children so as to feed the machine with more raw meat.  Funny thing,, Hitler also exhorted Germans to have more cannon fodder kids as well!

I noted also, that the Mayo clinic wanted a $5000 deposit before they would see me about my stroke.  Once I am on Medicare, this limitation is dropped - provided, of course, that President Musk hasn't abolished Medicare by March of next year.  Let's face it - our profit-driven medical system is broken.  Sure, I know a few smug people who have good jobs where they have great insurance coverage.  They live in fear of losing their jobs and becoming "one of us."  Corporate health insurance is one way to chain people to their desks, to be sure.

A lot of young people, particularly those who were snookered by worthless college degrees and onerous student loans, feel the system is stacked against them.  Again, this is how they feel, again amplified by outside forces.  You might think they just made shitty financial choices.  Maybe the latter is true, but then again, when I was in my 20's, no one ever offered my ruinous credit offers.  And I did buy my first house at age 22 - with government help. Yes, we did have a lot of things easier back then and we should recognize that.

But regardless of what you believe, it isn't hard to see why some (mostly older) are moving rightward and some others (mostly younger) are moving left.  The divide also neatly falls along financial lines.  I know "younger" people born into wealth who are convinced they deserved all of it and moreover not only should they pay less taxes, but none at all.  Should any of us win the billion-dollar lottery, I am sure we would feel the same way.  Mine! Gimmie!  It is human nature.  Where's my damn Social Security check?

I am not sure what the point of all of this is, other than it isn't as hard as one might think to understand why we seem so divided as a country.  You just have to put yourself in the other guy's shoes for a moment, and suddenly it makes "sense" - from their perspective, at least.

Dealer Fees, Stealer Fees (Private Party Sale!)

"Mandatory" dealer fees are the latest scam.

A friend of mine wants to buy a used car and asked me to help him out.  He is looking for the second generation of the "new" VW Beetle, which was made from 2011 to 2019, and we're looking for a later model one with under 40K miles.  Great, a fucking unicorn!  But not as rare as it might seem.

Even though the second generation "new" Beetle was redesigned for a more masculine look, it seems to have been more popular with women, particularly elderly women.  Within a 500 mile radius of my home, I was able to find about 20 examples, mostly in Florida.

We were camping in Florida and went to see one at a local Subaru dealer.  Advertised for $22,500 with 15,000 miles on the clock, it was, according to Edmunds, KBB, and NADAguides, a little overpriced.   But as it turns out, that price was the bait-and-switch price.

Since CoVid, dealers feel they can screw their customers mercilessly.  That's about to end, as consumers' pockets are emptying out.  One gag is to claim there is a "mandatory" dealer fee of $599, $999, or even $1499 that has to be paid in addition to the purchase price.

In this case, it was a $999 fee, which means the overpriced $22,500 Volkswagen is now an overpriced $23,499 Volkswagen.  "But our price is competitive!" they argue.   "But it is $23,499 with the fee!" I replied.  "No, that's not part of the price, that's a fee!" they illogically argue.  I guess they figure since half the country voted for Trump that everyone must be a moron.

But wait, it got worse - far worse.  The overall sales price jumped to over thirty grand by adding a "reconditioning fee" of $3000 (for a car that arrived in inventory the night before) as well as an "inspection fee" of $750.  It was downright insulting.  Was this because we were gay and perceived as clueless?

The only weapon you have in negotiation is to walk away so we did.  The next day, they lowered the "list" price - by $500.   The problem is, if you pay $25,000 or $30,000 for a car that has a market value of $20,000, well, the day after you bought it, you just set fire to $5000 to $10,000 for no reason whatsoever.

By the way, when I asked about the "reconditioning fee" he said that was to replace the tires.  Some expensive tires!  He had a mechanic look at them and that was a bad idea.  Even the mechanic was mystified as to why a car with 15K on the clock had nearly bald tires.  Dry rot, you expect, but worn out tread?

The more I looked at the carfax (which showed it in dealer inventory for nearly two years in Michigan before being "sold" to a dealer in Miami) the more it seemed there was a "story" here.  Used as a parts-getter with the odo turned off?  (some manufactures supply cars to dealers with a removable tab which can be used to "turn on" the odometer at time of sale).

Then there was the minor accident damage which, upon closer inspection, seemed more major - and badly repaired.  Urethane bumpers require a special elastomer in the paint and this one was already starting to chip.

Granted, low-mile cars have their own share of issues, like rotted tires and dead batteries.  But this was starting to look less and less like a low-mile car.  I'm glad we walked.

The best deals are from individual sellers - private party sale.  Harder to come by in this day and age as dealers have gone out of their way to make it hard to sell via private party sale.  The local grocery store where we lived in Virginia was threatened with a lawsuit by the local used care dealer association, as local residents were putting their "for sale" cars in the parking lot.  Their argument was that, if more than three cars had a for sale sign on them, the grocery store needed a used car dealer license.  Bullshit?  You bet.  But the grocery store backed down and put up signs threatening to tow cars away.

In addition to avoiding "dealer fees" and "reconditioning fees" and "inspection fees" there are also tag and title fees that can be avoided.  You can't avoid sales tax and registration fees (7% title fee here in Georgia) but the dealer wanted $599 for their "paperwork processing fee" and another $399 for an outside tag-and-title service to obtain title and tags.  These are both things you can do for free with a trip to your local DMV.  So that's another $999 in savings.

The good news is, we found at least two private party sale cars with low mileage, both belonging to elderly women who lost their licenses. One is orange!  Complete service records, oil change history, etc.  And we're going to look at the orange one tomorrow.  Price?  $18,000 to $20,000 (asking).  A far cry from thirty grand!  And no Takata airbag recall! (VW has stalled on this, claiming there are no parts available to fix the problem - aging airbags may go off spontaneously and blow your head off - charming!).

No one weeps when a car dealer goes bust or a used car salesman does the honorable thing by putting his head next to a Takata airbag and driving gently into a brick wall.

I don't deny a car dealer a fair profit, but tacking on ten grand to a twenty grand car?  Fuck that - and fuck them!

UPDATE:  When we bought our last two cars (the Hamster and the King Ranch) we negotiated the price over the phone or via text (same for the Nissan).  No hassle, no hidden charges.  There are good dealers out there - or were.  I think CoVid and Trumpism have destroyed people's  minds and created this "what's in it for ME?" mentality.  Also a new generation  has come of age with apparently no fiscal skills.  We have 20-year-olds going bankrupt on student loans, sports betting, Bitcoin, or options trading.

More on that, later.

Capital Gains Tax and the Installment Provision

When someone unilaterally alters the terms of a deal, walk away!

We sold the condo - or will be selling it shortly.  We had a lot of showings in the first two weeks - at least a dozen or more.  One problem in selling the place is financing. Since the majority of units are now owned by investors, Fannie Mae financing is not available.  It's either a VA loan or cash sales - and that limits your buyer pool.   As I have discussed ad nauseam here in the past, the value of Real Estate (or anything) is determined by supply and demand, and if the demand pool shrinks, so do prices.

We listed it at $165,000 which is in line with other recent sales for admittedly nicer appointed units.  That is still very cheap for walk-to-Metro in the DC area.  We got one offer for $145 with $115,000 cash down and asking us to "take back" a $30,000 note.  Since I bought 917 Duke Street with a similar arrangement back in 1994, I was receptive to the offer and asked them to put it in writing.

The offer came back at $135,000 (with no explanation) and putting $100,000 down and asking us to finance $35,000 over three years at one percent for some reason.  We countered at $140,000 with the note at 6% and they ghosted us.  All for the best, anyway, as the next day we got an all-cash offer, no contingencies, at $150,000.   Sold!

I ran into a similar thing with Duke Street.  I had listed the place for rent and an insurance agent (Boo! Hiss!) called me and said he wanted to buy the place for $640,000.  I was not on the market to sell, but was open to the offer.  He put together a written offer that changed, subtly, several terms of his verbal offer.  One change was that he wanted (verbally) to have 15 days to inspect the property and do an "economic analysis".  I agreed, only to be chagrinned to see he wrote the contract (which he typed up himself - a first warning sign) to read fifteen business days which is nearly a month.

Not surprisingly, his "inspection" claimed the building was riddled with defects, but out of the kindness of his heart, he would give me $400,000 for it as an act of charity.  I realized he was a time-waster and moved on and rented the place for another year and sold it for $680,000 with no contingencies.  Today it is once again a residence, as the market for office space has evaporated over time.  But it was an interesting lesson to be learned.

And the lessons are many.  When people try to "sneak" in changes in a contract, watch out.  A contact is a "meeting of the minds" not a game of "gotcha."  And when (as he did) you represent a written contract as encompassing the terms discussed verbally and via e-mail, but instead sneak in changes, well, that's pretty much fraud.  Just walk away from people like that.

The other thing is that, while home inspections can be useful to a buyer (particularly a first-time buyer) in deciding whether or not to buy, some buyers think they are a cudgel to be used to cram down the price on a home by getting a friendly home inspector to find "defects" in the property.  They will then try to threaten you by arguing that if you don't sell to them you are obligated to disclose these alleged "defects" to anyone else looking to buy the property.  It is a shady way of low-balling people and in the commercial or investor class of real estate, it isn't done much.  But it is used against amateur sellers all the time, so seller beware!

When I told the insurance agent (buyer) to piss-off, he started screaming at me on the phone.  He thought I was desperate to sell or something and that by tying up the property for nearly a month he would catch me in a cash-crunch.   I should have seen the signs early on.   But I learned from the experience.

But now on to today's topic - the installment provision of the tax code!  One problem with making money is that you have to pay taxes on it.  And paying taxes is only fair - up to a point - but getting socked with a big tax bill all at once isn't fair at all.  And the tax code assumes your income is steady, so when you get a one-time windfall, they assume this is your new normal and tax you accordingly.  Hourly workers notice this when working overtime - the withholding jumps up because Uncle Sam assumes this is your new norm.

So, for example, we sell this condo for $150,000.  Since the property was fully depreciated ages ago, our capital gains are easy to calculate - the entire sales price is a capital gain.  Problem is, we live on about $40K-$50K a year in 401(k) savings (no debt!) so that would put our income at $200,000 a year, which means we are boosted into a much higher bracket.  Fortunately, I was able to move the closing date to January, so the income will be taxable in 2025, not 2024.

Still, even then, it is problematic.  In addition to paying the capital gains taxes, we also will lose our Obamacare subsidy (nearly $20K!) or have to pay it back.  Again, the government (whose employees receive regular checks) assumes that a one-time blip in your income is a new norm and should be taxed accordingly.

One way around this is to spread the gains over a number of years (which the IRS forces you to do with passive losses!) through the installment provision.  Take back a mortgage on the property and receive monthly mortgage payments.  You get paid interest (ordinary income) as well as principle (capital gains) but your tax burden is spread out over a number of years.

There are other advantages as well.  For example, by offering owner financing, you may increase the size of the pool of buyers, which means you can ask a higher price.  In terms of an "investment" it is pretty sound, as the debt is backed by the property and if the tenant buyer stops paying, you can foreclose, take the property back and sell it again to someone else.  It's like being a landlord without having to unclog toilets.  Just make sure the down payment is enough to cover potential foreclosure costs, should the need arise.

But in our case, we decided to take the cash offer.  And some would be quick to note that long-term capital gains are taxed at relatively favorable rates.  However, if you have short-term gains (such as in house-flipping) they may be taxed as ordinary income.  Moreover, if you are selling a property over a half-million or so (see chart below) the rate may jump to 20% - which makes the installment provision look attractive.

Note also the 0% rate for gains under about fifty grand.  This makes a three year installment note of 50K a year look attractive!

For us, it is the Obamacare subsidy which is the issue. It amounts to nearly half our annual income and thus would really screw us in terms of accelerating the depletion of our 401(k) balance.   Punting this gain to 2025 at least lessens that impact as I am going on Medicare in March, and that just leaves Mark on ACA, which should cut our premiums (and thus subsidies) in half.

After taxes and payback of ACA subsidies, however, there will be barely enough to live on for more than a year or so.  Sad math!  But it is time to downsize, and the condo was becoming a break-even proposition, starting several years ago.

Next Up: Is it time to look at retirement communities?  Perhaps.

Tax rate	Single	Married filing jointly	Married filing separately	Head of household
0%	$0 to $47,025	$0 to $94,050	$0 to $47,025	$0 to $63,000
15%	$47,026 to $518,900	$94,051 to $583,750	$47,026 to $291,850	$63,001 to $551,350
20%	$518,901 or more	$583,751 or more	$291,851 or more	$551,351 or more

  

Who's Training Who? (The Perils Of Voice Recognition)

Is the machine serving us, or vice-versa?

A reader writes, suggesting I use voice recognition to dictate blog entries.  It is a good idea and I have used it in the past.  You can tell the voice recognition entries, as they tend to be verbose and long and sometimes have awkward phrasing.  This one is typed, and probably suffers from the same problems.

I tried one of the first voice recognition programs, Dragon NaturallySpeaking back in the 1990s.  It was kind of a hot mess.   As I recall, you had to "train" it with sample sounds, and even then, well, the results varied from frustrating to amusing.  I gave up rather quickly.

Still, it was an amazing thing.  As a kid, my Math teacher had this "crazy" idea that 7th graders could learn computer programming - normally a special elective reserved only for the smartest High School Seniors.  Come to think of it, in 2nd grade, they taught us set theory and Boolean Algebra as part of the "New Math" curriculum.  I could have been Bill Gates!

Problem was, back then, software was considered "Liberal Arts" and a trivial pursuit.  Colleges didn't recognize it as "science" and neither did the Patent Office.  Maybe that is why so many tech Billionaires are college dropouts.  Not everything there is to learn is taught in school.  In fact, nothing new is learned by memorizing the old.  But I digress.

Back then, of course, it was the 1970s and we sat around all day long getting high and drinking beers (at age 15, act shocked) and when passing the bong would say things like, "Hey man, wouldn't it be cool if someday you could just talk to a computer and it would talk back to you?"  And a friend would reply, "Far out, man!  Maybe someday they'll make a computer small enough to fit in a suitcase!"  "No way, man!"  I remember having a vision, at age 16, while high, about artificial intelligence - something about language models or something, I forget.  It evaporated as quickly as it appeared.

We had no idea how prescient our marijuana-fueled fever-dreams would be, and how soon they would come true, and how timid our expectations were.  Today, a cell phone fits in the palm of your hand and does all these things and more - and stores a library of information as well.  I have over 10,000 songs stored on my cell phone, along with a library of a thousand books.  For a guy raised on 20MB hard drives, who had to solder in DIP chips of memory, one Kbyte at a time, well, it seems unreal.

And yea, voice recognition has come a long way.  But it also hasn't.  One reason I am loathe to use it - in addition to the verbosity problem - is the manual corrections that need to be made.  And these corrections are as painful (in my case, literally) as typing new text.  Speaking of which, I have about 20 minutes until the Tylenol wears off, so I'd better damn well get to the point.

Google Voice has problems with homonyms.  They're, Their, and There are indistinguishable to voice recognition software, as are You're and Your.  Not long ago, posting something online and using the wrong your or you're would generate a litany of pedantic complaints along the lines of, "It's spelled you're, dumbass, buy a dictionary!"  But today, I see less and less of that, as everyone just assumes you are using voice recognition.  In automotive discussion groups, confusion of "breaks" for "brakes" isn't even commented on anymore.  Everyone knows what you meant.

Which raises an ugly point: Are we training the machines or are they training us?  Because I notice already that I tend to avoid contractions when using voice recognition to as to avoid the You're/Your or the They're/Their dichotomies.  So my voice recognition "writing" tends to be more formal, with "You are" or "They are" instead of their contracted counterparts (which save one ASCII character each!).

(I think also that people are accepting these alternative spellings and they may supplant the real deal in a decade or two.  The online brochure for your new SUV will describe the four-wheel anti-lock disc breaks and no one will bat an eye.  The Oxford English Dictionary will list "brakes" as an archaic spelling).

But beyond that, I find myself talking differently as well.  Apparently, according to voice recognition, I have several speech impediments, so I have to pronounce words more carefully.  Funny thing, though, when it comes to punctuation, Google Voice recognizes period, comma, exclamation point, and question mark, as actual punctuation, but cannot understand "quote" or "quotation mark" for the life of me.  Moreover, sometimes it reverts to spelling out those words, instead, for no apparent reason.

I wonder if perhaps voice recognition is training us to talk in a certain, stilted, accent-free manner, to the point where, a decade from now, the sound of our very voices will be unrecognizable to the people  of today.  We adapt to the machine, not vice-versa.  And if you need evidence of this, look no further to your smart phone, which you are likely hunched over as we speak (Are we speaking? Why is that a phrase?).  And consider how "Social Media" has changed how people actually think - and how it has swayed elections and overturned governments.  We are slaves to the machine.

Of course, it might not end up that way (or has it already?). A few lines of code could be inserted to use text context to determine whether you meant to say, "You're breaks are bad" or not.  Maybe "AI" will fix this, maybe not.   The results of Google searches using AI are laughable and inexcusably wrong - for no apparent reason, it seems, other than to mess with our minds.  Maybe that is the point.

The Tylenol is wearing off and my error rate is skyrocketing, so I guess I am done for today.  Not verbose, though, eh?  Take that, Google Voice!

The New 2025 CoVids Are Here!

Trump is back and so is CoVid!  Like a bad penny!

I haven't posted regularly for a number of reasons.  Health is one of them.  My rotator cuff apparently needs surgery and that will have to wait until the latter half of 2025 at least.   If I use the computer, my arm starts to ache and then I feel spikes of pain in my shoulder and then, after a while, my right arm feels like it is on fire.  I never did like the mouse and I wonder whether 30 years of mousing was in fact, the problem.

I could type up a storm in the days of WordPerfect and DOS - no mouse to interrupt the keyboard flow.  Back then I could do 100 WPM with few errors.  With a mouse, well, that drops it to 60 WPM - so much for Windows "productivity."  Today, I am lucky to hit 15 WPM with a lot of typos - perhaps a combination of my shoulder injury and early dementia.

Oh, well.

I also got the Covid - again.  A friend recently traveled to Canada by plane and came back hacking and coughing.  She and Mark spent a week setting up the Merry Artists show and he started hacking and coughing.  A few days later, so did I.  I felt like crap, just like the last time - with searing headaches (no doubt more "white spots" on the brain) and a general feeling of malaise.

My doctor claims the new variant of Covid is not as bad as the old one.  We'll see.  Bad time to appoint anti-vaxxers to government health agencies, doya think?

Anyway, I have my new passport and reservations are in place.  Repositioning cruise to Barcelona from Ft. Lauderdale (by way of Gibraltar and Lisbon), six weeks in a rented camper on the Iberian pennisula, and then another repositioning cruise back to New Orleans.  I may never come back!

Invest $500,000 in Portugal and you get the "Golden Passport" - 10-year residency and free to travel in the EU, plus a path to citizenship!  It's an option.

Gotta go - arm's on fire!

Let's All Do The Same Thing At The Same Time Every Year!

You have choices in life, whether you realize it or not!

It is the "Holiday Season" again and everyone is miserable.  I am reading online, tales of woe from people who "have to go to Mom and Dad's house" for Thanksgiving and they find the whole experience boring at best, horrific at worst.  Either they sit around eating for three days, or go shopping on one of the worst shopping days of the year.  If they are particularly unlucky, the asshole Uncle chides them for not supporting Trump.

Family, what's not to like?

I find it hilarious that people say "I have to go" when they don't.  If you are a kid, even a college kid, I guess you have no choice.  But as a grown adult, with children of your own,  you can have your own Thanksgiving - or no Thanksgiving (Oh! Scary!) if you want to.  Like most of the rest of the world (the vast majority in fact) it can be just another day.  You have choices and being miserable is a choice in many cases, but most people either can't see that or don't want to, as they want something to complain about.

Mark is exhausted from a weeklong effort to set up the Merry Artists show.  Over 6,000 works of art and crafts!  He's done (with an army of volunteers) enough Christmas decorating to do a dozen homes.  So we won't be going overboard at our house this year. And after all that effort, we turned down invites for Thanksgiving from friends.   It worked out for the best - Mark also has a bad cold.

But what about family?  Most are dead, others live far away.   No, I am not buying a plane ticket on one of the busiest days of the year to visit a long-lost relative.  It's OK to say "no" to society's traditions.

Besides, Thanksgiving blows.  Overeating and football - I guess that is America in a nutshell.

But what does Thanksgiving really celebrate?  Sure, it honors the beginning of the genocide of the Native Americans. But it also celebrates our puritanical roots.  Remember, these "Puritans" would begat the same folks, who, not so many years later, would hang witches.  We've been trying to live that down ever since.

Yea, yea, tradition.  Our "Heritage."  But it's OK to move beyond heritage, particularly when it celebrates bad things.  Some Germans still celebrate Hitler's birthday - that's wrong.  Celebrating Puritans landing on Plymouth Rock is equally as bad.  It's not like they were the first to colonize America, either.  As Cole Porter put it, such a shame Plymouth Rock didn't land on them!

Of course, if you love turkey and football, go for it.  I'm not stopping you.  But it is a choice and you can;t bitch about how boring it is or how you hate the Black Friday crowds.  You can't complain about the choices you make.

Myself, I spent Thanksgiving working on the Buggy.  Still, the steering is shot and the brakes are iffy.  But it still runs, I guess,.

It Takes Time For Reality To Kick In

The further you pull a rubber band back, the harder the snap.

When I was a kid, the Vietnam war was going on.  Of course, we were the good guys, at least in the mind of an 8-year-old.  I wasn't aware of the nuances of the war - for example, that we were propping up a minority (and corrupt) Catholic regime in a country that was overwhelmingly Buddhist.  Stores were spread about the "VC" jamming chopsticks into the ears of Catholic Nuns and Priests - stories about as truthful as "They're eating the cats, they're eating the dogs!"

But we wanted to believe as we were the good guys, saving the world from the Nazzies and Hirohito, and pushing back Chinese aggression in Korea.  Hooray for our team!  Every person on the planet tends to believe this about their own country.  No one wants to think they are the bad guy.

And we aren't bad guys.  But sometimes every country does dumb things or even evil things.  It takes a while for people to realize that, "Hey, that was a really shitty idea!" and in some cases, some people never figure it out.  There are people today, in Germany as well as other countries, who think Hitler had the right ideas and "if only..." things would have worked out OK in the end.  The fact that they didn't never seems to register with those folks.

With Vietnam, the first inklings that something wasn't right came from the youth who were being drafted, who wondered why their lives should be interrupted - or ended - to fight in someone else's war on the other side of the planet.  Incidents such as the My Lai massacre created more doubt - although even then, we tended to rationalize those things as "a few bad apples" and thus forgot about it.

We overthrew the corrupt South Vietnamese government and replaced it with one just as corrupt, and failed to notice that the side we were championing was not even popular with the people they governed.

Every evening, in 1968, Walter Cronkite would tally up the dead in a "body count" graphic, and every night, it would be like 257 VC dead and 15 American dead.  We had to be winning!  Eventually they would run out of soldiers, right?

Over time, we dropped more and more bombs - more than we dropped in WW2!  And Agent Orange, mining harbors, and so on and so forth.  The mightiest Army - and Navy and Air Force - were brought to bear against the guerrilla army of a tiny Southeast Asian county (admittedly, supplied by outside forces) and at best could fight to a stalemate.

Some in government started to realize there were limits to our power.  Short of using nuclear weapons or firebombing cities, we could not "win" the war, and even if we did, we would lose in the world political sphere.  After nearly two decades, we called it quits and went home. Shortly thereafter, the North Vietnamese took over and today, oddly enough, don't seem to have too much of a grudge against us, even as we poisoned the land, left unexploded ordinance, and killed millions.

In retrospect, it seemed like a stupid idea - taking over a war that the French had lost, on the pretext that somehow we were preventing the spread of Communism.  Not only did we fail in Vietnam, we tipped over the dominoes in Cambodia and Laos.  One wonders whether we could have done better by embracing the North Vietnamese - as we eventually did - rather than opposing them.  Today, they are a trading partner, and they use us as a wedge between themselves and China.

But still, today, just as there are those who think Hitler was right (and in Japan today, Tojo), there are angry veterans who still believe that "if only..." we could have won in Vietnam.  Hey, we have people still fighting the Civil War - in their minds.  But for the majority of people, the writing was on the wall - it just took us two decades to read it.

The Soviet Union went through the same thing in Afghanistan - and we did as well, decades later.  Our adventure in Iraq accomplished nothing, other than to embolden Iran - leading to the chaos we see in Sudan and Palestine and Lebanon today.

It seems when you invade another country, you eventually lose.  Unless you are willing to bomb their cities into rubble and - as Churchill once put it, "make the rubble bounce" - you can't win.  And even if you go that far, as we did in Germany and Japan, you can't hold onto a foreign country for long.  We let the Germans, even ex-Nazis, particularly ex-Nazis, take over control of "West" Germany after the war.  We allowed Japan its independence, as we realized an occupying Army could never control the country.  Even so, of course, we have military bases in those countries today.

We seemed to forget those lessons when we invaded Iraq and Afghanistan - as did the Soviets with the latter.  And Putin may be failing to appreciate the past as well.  But the average Russian?   Again, it is natural to assume that anyone residing in a country may be inclined to root for their home team, particularly when the propaganda shades their view.  Just as we read the "body counts" every night in the news and assumed we were winning, I suspect Russians are reading similarly biased reports on their news channels and assume that, any day now, Ukraine will collapse.  Sure, Trump may cut off aid to Ukraine, but Western Europe may fill in that void, as they rightfully should, as the war is on their doorstep.

Russian people turned against their own Afghan war when bodies started coming home in bags and the cost of occupying the barren nation started to degrade their own economy.  Putin seems to be keeping dissent in check, through propaganda, lengthy prison sentences for dissenters, and defenestration.  But this only stretches the rubber band further.

Having your son or husband come home in a bag is disheartening.  Having them listed as "MIA" and left to rot in some field - so the Army doesn't have to pay death benefits - is even worse.  Eventually, something has to give.  But it could take a long, long time before that happens.  Remember we were in Iraq and Afghanistan for two decades before we bailed out, realizing there was nothing more to be gained by staying, and we had gained nothing by going in the first place

Can Ukraine last that long?  One wonders.  Even if Russia "won" could they survive decades of insurgency?  How long can Putin - age 72 - realistically live, or be fit enough to lead? Will the next leader be willing to continue an unwinnable war with Western Europe?

Hard to say, other than in the interim, a lot of people will suffer and die for no apparent reason whatsoever.

CVTs Take Over The World?

In the sedan and small SUV world, CVTs seem to be taking over.

A friend of mine wants to buy a "new" car (used car) and has his mind fixed on the VW "Beetle" which went out of production in 2019.  Oddly enough, I found several cars for sale within a 300-mile radius with less than 40K miles on the clock, some with far less.  They are selling for more than the list price when new!

People ask me about cars.  "You know a lot about cars!" they say.  I used to.  I used to know a lot of things, but time marches on.  I try to steer people toward Hondas or Toyotas as they are pretty reliable (with a few notable exceptions) so they don't come back to me later on for advising them to buy a Yugo.  Somehow, though, when you give advice, you always get blamed when things go wrong, which is why I think people seek advice.  It is why I am loathe to give it.

Anyway, he is fixated on this Beetle like a dog with a bone, as his first car he owned was a brand-new 1970 Beetle that he paid cash for ($1999) which you could do back then.  He has nostalgic feelings for the car, and at his age, why not indulge yourself?

But I looked into other small sedans - which can be had brand new for about the same price as a 6-year-old Beetle, and was shocked to see that CVT transmissions have taken over the field.  I wrote about them before and how BMW jumped into the game by putting them in certain models of the Mini.  A friend of mine had one and it blew out at 70K miles.  There was a class-action suit and BMW got out of the belt-drive game.

Nissan, always the Chrysler of Japan (The Number 3 automaker) went all-CVT in their car and SUV lineup with similar results.  Particularly in larger, higher-horsepower cars, the continuously variable transmission seems to fail early.  Even Toyota and Honda use them in their smaller cars, and from what I hear, only Toyota seems to have figured it out with  its "Aisen" CVTs.

When I wrote my earlier piece on CVTs there was choice in the market.  Today, it is hard to find a car without a CVT.  And the reasons are readily apparent.   Ever-stringent mileage and emissions requirements mean that manufacturers have to resort to more and more esoteric technology to meet these goals - for cars at least.  Light trucks and big SUVs have their own, more lax rules.

So we saw the move to variable valve timing, multi-port fuel injection, coil-over ignition, turbocharging, aluminum block engines, and so on and so forth.  Chrysler (Stellantis - I still can't say it) pissed-off their Charger/Challenger faithful by replacing the V-8 "Hemi" (a bit of a misnomer as it had little in common with that storied engine) with a turbocharged V-6.  Heresy!  But the smaller motor makes over 500 HP, perhaps not as much as the venerated "Hellcat" but far more than the base V-8.

Ford was already on the turbocharging bandwagon, with its "Ecoboost" line getting 300HP from a four cylinder engine and hundreds more from its V-6.  Maybe the rumble of a V-8 sounds better that the turbo-whine of the ecoboost, but the latter delivers more power and greater efficiency than the former.  Car companies have no choice in the matter - unless they want to keep buying carbon credits from Elon Musk.

So CVTs are thrust upon us and if you want a "car" chances are, it will have a CVT.  The new KIAs are all-CVT except the performance models and larger SUVs.  You can't escape the belt drive if you are looking at a new car these days.

I am told they are better and perhaps this is true.  People forget that the early days of the automatic transmission were pretty spotty.   There were semi-automatic transmissions and something Chrysler called the Presto-matic or Gyrol fluid drive.  The Buick "Dynaflow" was basically a one-speed transmission (if you don't count reverse) that relied on the torque converter for speed changes.  When mated to the Buick "nailhead" engine it worked, after a fashion, but was no speed demon and certainly wasted gas.

There were further teething changes.  Even after the introduction of the TurboHydroMatic (THM) series of transmissions, which became an industry standard, there were mis-steps by GM.  In the early 1960s, the "Roto-Hydromatic" or "Slim Jim" automatic was put into Oldsmobile and Pontiac cars, and failed early and often.  It wasn't until the late 1960s that the "bulletproof" THM350 and THM400 evolved.  They even put them in Rolls-Royces.

Of course, that didn't mean the struggle was over.   In an attempt to save money, GM de-contented the THM350 and came up with the THM250, which, in theory, was sufficient for the low-powered V-8's of the late 1970s.  A lot were replaced under "hidden warranty" claims as they failed at about 70,000 miles or so.

So, the battle for a reliable transmission never ends, with new technologies and new performance standards always on the horizon.  Newer "dual clutch" automatics do away with fluid couplings, but have reliability issues of their own, particularly in early models.  But over time, the bugs get worked out.  No manufacturer wants to get a bad reputation, as Mini and Nissan have, for exploding belt-drive transmissions.

When you start to make a product in the hundreds of thousands or even millions, well, you figure out how to fix problems.  Early adapters always suffer the most as they end up as the Beta-testers for the company.  But over time, fixes are developed (or the technology abandoned, as in the Mini) and reliability improves.  There is an old joke that GM cars are nearly perfect when the very last one rolls off the assembly line - they finally get it right before pulling the plug.  Sadly, the bulk of sales for any model are in the introduction year, not in the twilight.

So maybe the era of the CVT is upon us.  They are lightweight, cheaper to make, and give better mileage and lower emissions.  And we might not have a choice in any event.  That being said, I am glad I am not in the market for a new car right now.  Maybe if I ever am, by that time, we will have some reliability data on CVTs.

And maybe my friend has the right idea of buying a 2019 "final edition" Beetle (with 9,000 miles on it!) with the standard 6-speed conventional automatic.  Maybe that is why used car prices are spiking, too.

A similar thing is happening in the outboard motor world, by the way.  Old Johnson (OMC) V-4 two-stroke outboards can be rebuilt again and again, and parts are cheap.  With similar new engines selling for five figures, many a fisherman is finding it cheaper to simply "build your own."

That being said, on the other end of the spectrum are ocean-going center consoles with five (5) engines of 500HP each.  Those guys aren't worried about the cost!

Bissell Rocks!

I loved this little handheld vacuum to death!  Literally!

Years ago, we bought a Bissell model 1984 vacuum cleaner and fell in love with it.  It was lightweight, easy to use, easy to clean, held a charge forever, and went under even the smallest furniture.   It's only Achilles heel was the power switch, but I was able to replace that myself.  Over the years it has gotten worn by doing dumb things like vacuuming the sidewalk and such.  But it continues to bring joy, so I bought a second one at Janitorial Equipment Supply for $208 (regularly $299!).

We bought a model 1985 handheld (shown above) which was sold as a "car vac."  Some reviewers complained about the suction power, but I liked it. It even had a power head!  But once again, the power switch went bad and when I went online to get parts, I saw that it was recalled for potential battery fires - a problem we never had. I filled out the recall form, sent in a photo of the data plate and a couple of weeks later they send me a brand-spanking new Model 31783 Icon Pet Turbo stick vacuum, a $200 value, free!  Thanks, Bissell!

I now own five seven Bissell vacuum cleaners now. In addition to the two model 1984's and the late, great model 1985, we have an old corded bag model 1398 that we bought many years ago at Walmart (for under $50) which we left at the condo.  The tenant may have taken it.  By the way, the condo is on the market now.  Make an offer!

We also have a bagless cyclone unit (similar to the 1009) that a friend gave to us when they sold their 5th wheel trailer. We use it at the storage locker where we keep the camper. Eventually, it may go out to Mark's Studio when the old GE canister vac finally throws in the towel (clay dust is hard on vacuum cleaners). (We also have a RIGID portable shop vac, so with the two aging GE's that makes ten vacuum cleaners overall, I guess).

A neighbor was throwing away a model 2482, which is sort of like a dustbuster mounted on a stick. I snagged it because (a) it was a Bissell and (b) it said "lithium ion" on the front, so odds are, the battery was good, and (c) it could be perfect for the camper, as it was small and folded up for storage. I ordered the accessory crevice and upholstery tool from the Bissell site (their prices are about the same as eBay or Amazon) and downloaded the user manual. I took it apart and realized why they threw it away. The filter had never been cleaned and there was a wad of paper in the intake tube, which then clogged up with animal hair. A half-hour of cleaning and reassembly and we were back in business. The previous owners were nice enough to give me the charger plug!

Of course, the 1985 is now ready for the trash and the GE canister vacs will follow it when we run out of bags - they are beaten to death!  As for our older model 1984, if it breaks, I will keep the battery and the dirt canister as spares.  But until then, we can both vacuum at the same time!

As for this "free" vacuum, I believe the power head detaches like a dust-buster, so it may become our new handheld, or make its way to the camper.

 Vacuum cleaners have a hard life. Overall, I am happy with Bissell products - they certainly stand behind them! They work well and are inexpensive to buy.  And they are lightweight, easy to use, and best of all, cordless.

UPDATE: The new vacuum arrived and it is really a thing of beauty - literally.  Battery life so far seems weaker, but it has great suction, a "turbo" mode (which drains the battery faster) and handheld and floor attachments.   Thanks, Bissell!

It's No One's Fault, It's Everybody's Fault!

Bernie Sanders knows what its like to be a working man!

Bernie struggled through life.  He spent over a decade working his way through college, working for GM and UTC and even UPS as a Teamster.  He had several side hustles, including delivering pizzas, tutoring calculus and working as a paid intern at planned parenthood.  Once  he graduated, he started his own business and became a jobs creator, too!

Oh, wait, that's me.  Bernie worked as a handyman carpenter and failed at even that.  He decided to go into politics and became a career politician.  His wife ran a college into the ground.  He became a landlord and owns at least three or four houses, including a dacha on Lake Champlain.  Yes, he is a man of the people and knows of our struggle!

Or maybe not.  He plays the populist card, but like my stinking hippie brother's communist puppet shows,  he has no idea what working in a factory or warehouse is really like, other than in Marxist theory.  And as I noted before, you come down to the factory spouting that commie bullshit, the "workers" will beat the snot out of you.  The workers are very conservative, it turns out.

I have no doubt he is sincere in his beliefs - as was Ralph Nader - just wrong.  The reason the "workers" didn't embrace Harris was because not because they thought the the Democratic Party was not left enough but was too far left.  Bernie is right that the Democrats' platform didn't resonate with workers in steel mills in Springfield, Ohio.  But the reason they didn't resonate was Bernie and AOC and Ohmar.  They became the face of the Democratic party, thanks to Fox News and other right-wing media outlets, and Democrats let that go unchallenged.

There is a reason why, too.  If Democrats distanced themselves from the far-Left of the party, they risk alienating the far-Left voters, who are skittish as it is - often threatening not to vote unless their demands are met.  This is what I call, "hostage politics" and it is quite popular these days.

Meanwhile, moving toward the center to appease moderate "independent" voters didn't work either, as the GOP and its media (and Russian) cohorts painted the Democrats as radicals.  For many middle-of-the-road Americans, the idea of voting for a Democrat was just a non-starter, even if that candidate was Reagan or Trump (who were both Democrats at one time, oddly enough).

The Democratic "brand" has been tarnished and to many Americans, it stands for transgender school operations, litter boxes in the classroom for furries, student loan forgiveness, welfare state, and increased taxes.  Most of these characterizations (if not all of them) are false, but they stuck.  And they stuck because people love rage-bait - they love to hate things.  And Fox News gave them a colorful piñata to whack at.  And it felt good.

So no, it wasn't Bernie's fault - entirely - or that of Reps AOC and Omar.  They represent a portion of the party that is on the leftish side, and the GOP used them to decorate their piñata.  On the other hand, Sanders has some balls claiming to represent the working man, when he has never worked a day in his life as a factory worker or hard hat or fast-food worker.  He has a lot of nice theories about what these jobs are like, but no real hard experience.

America is a conservative country. So are most other countries in the world.  All across the world, right-wing parties are making gains or are in control.  Even "liberal" Western Europe is turning to right-wing politics, in part due to the worldwide immigration crises.   Leftist politics are past their "sell-by" date, worldwide.

Democrats are able to achieve power only when they lean in toward the center and advance centrist causes.  Leftists hate this, but it is part and parcel of "the art of the possible."  If you look back at the Democratic Presidents of the post-war era, you see a lot of centrist and sometimes conservative policies.

Kennedy cut taxes, expanded our role in Vietnam, and even greenlighted a ill-fated invasion of Cuba.  Johnson did expand civil rights and "the great society" but escalated the war even further.  Jimmy Carter was from the conservative South and implemented the deregulation of industries that Reagan largely took credit for (a typical Republican trick, by the way).  And Clinton?  He negotiated the legislation that resulted in welfare being disbanded, replaced by TANF, which provides only five years of "assistance" for your lifetime.

Even poor Obama was called out by the far-Left as being too conservative. Seems you just can't win at this game, no matter what you do!

People complain about our "two-party" system, yet when I went to the polls, there were five names on the Presidential ticket.  The reason why three of them never went anywhere was because no one is that far-left or far-right.  Heck, half the people voting for fringe candidates like Russian asset Jill Stein, do so only as a "protest vote."

So no, the problem wasn't that the Democrats were "not far left enough" but that they were painted as too far left.   But yes, too, Bernie is right in that the Democrats didn't explain well enough how their platform would help the working class.

Tell people you will lower taxes on the middle class and raise taxes on the rich and all they hear is "...raise taxes..." because, let's face it, everyone thinks they are the "rich" particularly when you classify "rich" as someone making over $400,000 a year.  You'd be surprised how many middle-class people make that much, particularly when they have dual incomes at good jobs.

The flip side is also true - they hear about cutting taxes for the lower classes and they think, "tax cut for minorities" which of course is racist.  Act shocked.  Trump's pie-in-the-sky proposals to eliminate taxes on tips and overtime resonated with the working class as he was talking directly about cutting taxes on labor itself.  A waitress who has to cough up extra  money to cover taxes on her tips (which often wipes out the base pay) feels they are being over-taxed.  A factory worker agrees to work overtime, only to see the tax on his overtime pay rocket up (because of the higher pay rate) and appear to negate the time-and-a-half or double-time pay rate.

So yea, maybe Bernie has a point, but his solution isn't the answer.  Going further left isn't going to entice conservative workers.

Of course, people are "blaming"  other groups - young white men who follow Andrew Tate, Hispanics who are conservative Catholics, white women who vote their own rights away, Jews who think that Harris was too soft on Hamas, Palestinians who though Harris was not hard enough on Israel - the list goes on and on.  You can't please everybody, particularly when they have been so effectively divided up into factions.

So, how did Trump do it?  After all, while the Leftists are threatening me with universal healthcare and free college, there are, on the far-right, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, racists, misogynists, and antisemites, some of who have promised violence (or actually engaged in it) to get their way.   How Trump navigates this is interesting.  He "dog whistles" to the extremists ("good people on both sides") which infuriates the Left, but who cares?  Half of the Left is threatening not to vote anyway, as a protest.

Republicans fall in line.  They also have selective hearing.  They might be peripherally aware that odious elements of the far-right support Trump, but they seem to be comfortable with filtering that out.  Meanwhile, if even one Antifa activist expresses support for Harris, well, she's dead to them (Republicans, that is).  Like I said, selective hearing.

There are some on the far-left who want to see the system fail.  I talked with a friend who was upset over the election outcome.  He said, "I hope these fuckers who voted for Trump lose their homes, their jobs, and their life savings - even if it means the same for me!  Maybe only then will they see the folly of their ways and vote progressive!"  It is the age-old argument of tearing down before starting over.   Destroying the village to save the village.  Sucks to be a Villager!

On that note, we made our reservations for a 14-day transitioning (repositioning) cruise to Spain.   Cruise lines move their boats from the Caribbean to the Mediterranean and back, based upon demand.  The fares are very low (~$750 per person) and the ships are sparsely populated.  We plan on renting a VW camper van and exploring the Iberian peninsula, including Portugal, to see the sights and also think about expat living.  We are taking another cruise ship back, to New Orleans, a month-and-a-half later, staying there a while and then taking the train home (sleeper car).  It should be a fun trip.  This summer, we are going to Canada to cool off and see what our options are there as well.

And no TSA, no Karens trying to claim your seat, no $20 drinks at the airport lounge!  Crossing the Atlantic by ship - twice!

And before you say it, yes, I saw the article in the paper today about the "Four year cruise" - it is a scam.  The company has a tired old cruise ship and has a chequered history, even before making that offer.  And the price is ridiculous!  For less than half the $250,00 they are asking, you could spend four years on state-of-the-art cruise ships!

Russia Foiled Again?

While the election turned out in Russia's favor, maybe it wasn't what they really wanted.

I was listening to an NPR show on the radio recently.  Now that Trump has won, NPR, WaPo, and NYT suddenly rediscover their role as "liberal media."  I guess even they too, will sell their country up the river for a nickle with that "both sides" and "sanewashing" approach before the election.  Now that everyone on the Left is paranoid, well, they've gone back to being a beacon for liberals.  All I can say is, don't trust 'em!

The show was interesting as one brief piece was about a Russian podcaster who was far-right - sort of their version of Alex Jones.  And he was upset that Trump won.  The Russian playbook was to repeat the events of January 6th, by having Harris win by a narrow margin.  Then, the Russian Internet Research Agency could spread "election fraud"  rumors and start another insurrection or perhaps this time, civil war.

Their goal, he said, was chaos.   If Americans started a civil war it would shrink our power on the world stage and help the narrative of actual and wanna-be dictators who have used January 6th as an example of why Democracy doesn't work.  A peaceful transition of power?  That's no fun for Russia!

So of all the possible outcomes, Trump winning wasn't on their Bingo card and Russia is kind of pissed-off about that, at least according to this Aleks Dzhons of Russia.

I thought that was fascinating. A friend of mine went to Afghanistan and came back with a long beard and some long stories. I asked him why the Taliban was blowing up civilians in terror attacks on their own countrymen. "Chaos works in their favor," he replied. And that is the goal of the terrorist - terror. There is no pork chop hill to take over or strategic military goals to achieve. Just chaos.

So a smooth election foiled their carefully laid plans.

What will happen now remains to be seen. Much of the "Project 2025" agenda will require legislation from Congress - some parts even require Constitutional Amendment. Not all Republicans are on board with this agenda, and if only a few defect, or the filibuster remains in effect, well, the flywheel of Congress could put a check on Trump's ambitious plans. And all it will take is a 24-month delay until the mid-terms. At that point, we may see the majority in the House or Senate change, as it often does during mid-terms.

Of course, this assumes the Democrats get their shit together and put forth candidates that can get elected. Here in Georgia, Republicans often run unopposed. How hard is it to put someone - anyone - on the ballot? You need not even campaign - just wait for your opponent to get caught up in some predictable scandal.

Anyway, gotta go - booking our transatlantic cruise to Spain and Portugal. Scouting out some ex-pat locations to hide for four years!

Congratulations President Hoover! (What Went Wrong - Or Did It?)

Fat guy with weird hair who thinks tariffs will save the economy.  Hmmm.....

I noted in my last posting that Hillary was leading in the polls prior to election day 2016.  She lost.  But in her defense, she won the popular vote.   This time around, it appears that not only did Trump win the electoral college, but the popular vote as well.  This leaves a lot of people scratching their heads looking for an explanation.  I think it is not one thing, but a host of small things that the GOP took advantage of, to win.

1. The Candidate(s):  Joe Biden ran as a one-term President.  Then he changed his mind.  Then he changed his mind again, and Kamala was anointed his successor, only weeks before the convention.  Whatever your political views are, this is a unique series of events in US History - as unique as a President being voted out of office - and voted back in again.  And no, Donald Trump is no Grover Clevelend - he's much fatter!

Kamala was not my first choice, but rather a "Not Trump!" candidate.  Some argue that was all she was and didn't have a platform of her own.  This was not true, but as we shall see, the Democrats made the fundamental mistake of letting the opposing party define you.  Once you go along with that, you are toast.

2.  Democrats Fall In Love, Republicans Fall In Line:  It is an old saying and it is true - Republicans have a "what's in it for me?" attitude, whether their issue is abortion, the economy, lower taxes, jobs, immigration or whatever.  So long as the candidate gives them something they want, the overlook other issues which they believe don't affect them.  So they will go along with the party line and vote obediently.

Democrats, on the other hand, seem to want a candidate who reflects all of their values without exception.  And we saw this on the far-left, which, encouraged by Russian Internet trolls, claimed they would not vote for Biden (and later Harris) unless the Democrats gave in to a laundry list of far-left demands.  The fact that Trump will give them nothing, didn't seem to faze them.

In fact, some were cheering on a Trump victory.  As in 2016, many of the "Bernie Bros" voted for Trump, hoping the country would fall into collapse and thrust Bernie into the oval office. Yes, people actually think this way and there is historical precedent for it.  Communists in Germany, for example, hoped that they would win in the end as people turned away from fascism.  I guess that sort of happened, at least in East Germany.  But usually what happens is the other side wins and then puts you in jail.

3. Palestine: Harris had to walk a tightrope on Israel and Palestine.  If she came across as too sympathetic to the plight of civilians in Palestine, she risked offending some Jewish voters in swing States.  On the other hand, if she came across as too pro-Israel, she risked offending Arab voters.

In Dearborn, Michigan, a largely Muslim community today, Joe Biden won in 2020 with 80% of the vote, according to NPR this morning.  Harris lost to Trump 41% to 31%.  Jill Stein, who actually visited the city, scored an amazing 18% of the vote.  This time around, third parties didn't appear to be "spoilers" as in the past, but rather "none of the above" (as in Utah) or not voting was what turned the tide.

And the optics were horrible.  Some pro-Palestinian protesters were seen lauding Hamas and Hezbollah, as if they were legitimate political parties and not terrorist organization.  Again, people - and Republicans in particular - vote with their own self-interest in mind.  And to a majority of Americans, the math is simple:  Israel hasn't blown up a disco or pushed a man in a wheelchair off a cruise ship.  Hamas and the PLO and Hezbollah have killed Americans, while Israel hasn't.  Like it or not, this means Americans see Israel as "the good guys" and Palestinians as the bad.

As an added bonus, many fundamental Christians believe the end times are upon us (and Trump certainly fits the bill as the Antichrist!) and see the Middle East in this context of prophesies foretold.  They actually want world war three to break out in Israel as they believe it was set forth in Revelations.  Plus, I guess, they don't mind seeing a lot of Jews killed.  Yes, they are pro-Israel and yet, antisemitic.  Not the brightest bunch.

4. The Youth Vote That Wasn't:  A lot was bet on young people, some just coming of age, voting for Harris.  And many did.  Many did not and many more simply didn't vote.  The GOP has done a good job of dumbing down education and Trump sure loves his "poorly educated" voters.  But even those of good education and high intelligence, the voting record is poor.

Even during the Vietnam War, when the "what's in it for me?" crowd had a big dog in the fight, many young people saw voting as a scam or not worth doing.  In fact, the riots at the 1968 convention (because Humphrey wasn't anti-war enough) only insured a Nixon victory.  Again, since they can't get everything they want, they will insure that everyone gets the exact opposite.

Recent research suggests that the human brain doesn't fully develop - mature - until about age 25.  This is why we send 18-year-olds off to fight our wars and not 30-somethings who know better.  My own experience is this was the exact age I gave up drugs and alcohol, finished my Engineering degree, started my career and went to law school.  Prior to that, I was just a big, goofy kid (and am regressing back to that as we speak).

Young men in particular are very susceptible to peer pressure and influence.  Joe Rogan Bros are a case in point.  That is, if they vote at all - voting is so gay - right?

Among young leftists, the problem is worse.  They are too young to understand that idealism is fine and all, but sometimes - most times - you have to settle for what is possible.  "Politics is the art of the possible" according to Otto von Bismark.  Wrong guy but he had the right idea.  Compromise is one of those things you learn after age 25 when you realize that while the world is not an ideal place, it still is pretty decent, if you don't obsess about perfection.

Whatever the reason, the youth vote for Harris wasn't enough to turn the tide and relying on the youth vote is a bad idea for any campaign.

5. Race and Gender:  One issue you didn't see the Democrats raising this time was the fact we might have a "woman President."  I still have a refrigerator magnet that the Hillary campaign sent me that says "Madam President" - celebrating the novelty of it all.  This time around, only Republicans harped on race or gender, with Trump famously making his "she turned black" comments.

Republicans knew they could afford to piss off minorities as, well, they are minorities and white people still make up 70% of the country.  But even then, there are minorities who don't consider themselves minorities but will be in for a rude awakening pretty soon.  I noted before how my friends from Latin America were insulted if you suggested their ancestry was anything other than 100% Spanish.  Even the head of the "Proud Boys" white supremacy group is of afro-cuban ancestry.  He doesn't realize that people named "Enrique" are not allowed in the Country Club, except through the servants' entrance.

Some people call this the "pick me!' mentality.  People like this believe that when racist or misogynist slurs are being bandied about, they are not talking about them but rather those others who of course, are bad.  The far-right has another term for them, "the people we kill last!" (as was applied to Yanni Yapalapalopalous).

6. They Go Low, We Go High: This was Hillary's strategy and it backfired in a big way.  Study after study shows that negative ads work which is why politicians use them.  Willie Horton ads and Swiftboating were abhorrent, but they worked to elect Bush and his son.   No one even remembers the names of their opponents.

Online, we saw ads for Trump claiming Harris was a "border czar" who personally let in millions of "illegal immigrants."  Of course, no such "border czar" position exists.  Vice Presents attend State funerals overseas and act as a tie-breaking vote in the Senate.  Period.

The Kamala ads were upbeat and positive and fizzled out.  Tax cuts for the middle class!  Tax the rich!  It sounded much more vague than Trump's false promises to eliminate taxes on tips and overtime and "protect" Social Security.  Trump is the friend of the working man! /s

What I would have liked to see is Harris fighting back in an ad using the same ominous voice the GOP uses in their ads, pointing out that Biden got a bi-partisan bill ready for Congress and had the votes to pass it, but it was Trump who killed the deal.  And Trump is a liar and who wants to vote for a liar?

There was mountains of "negative" to use against Trump - often in his own words!  Democrats used none of it.  They wanted to be above the fray, I guess.

And I guess Harris, like Hillary, had no choice.  A man using attack ads to get elected is being decisive and bold.  A woman doing the same thing is a whiny harpy.  And it ain't just men saying that - a lot of women, secretly or otherwise, believe the same thing.

* * *

So, where does this leave us? Will project 2025 be enacted?  Will Trump slap tariffs on imports and start a trade war with China (raising prices through the roof and destroying our export economy)?  We'll see.

I wonder sometimes if the Democrats wanted to lose.  The last decade or two have been a repeat of the same two decades 100 years ago.  We had an epidemic back then, a war, and then a booming economy that seemed to grow for no organic reason.  Everyone was trading stocks, the rich got richer while the working classed got screwed.  In 1929, it all came crashing down at once.  And Herbert Hoover pushed through the Smoot-Hawley tariff act of 1930 which put the nail in the coffin of a dying economy.

Could the same thing happen again?  Maybe Democrats saw the writing on the wall and realized if they won, they would inherit a major recession.  Let Trump win, and he has to "own" it - and make it far worse with his half-assed economic proposals.  By 2028, maybe Americans will be finally fed up with "tax cuts for the rich" and "trickle-down economics" and vote Democratic.

Maybe.  But by then there may not be another election.  Besides, that smacks of the Bernie Bros methodology - tear down the system to change it.  That rarely works without a lot of suffering involved.

Meanwhile, Mr. See is bombarding me with brochures and books on how to live the ex-pat life in Panama or Portugal or Catalonia...  There is a transitioning cruise on Holland America to Portugal in April, and the Condo is up for sale.

Stay Tuned!