Month: February 2018

I watch sports because I like sports. I don’t watch sports when there are political overtones. I did not watch the NFL on TV this year because of the demonstrations during the National Anthem. I realized that not all of the NFL players were protesting, but the higher-ups in the NFL did nothing to curb the National Anthem protests, and this turned me off. I suspect that many did what I did. They turned off the NFL and the TV ratings took a significant hit last season.
It appears that a similar thing happened with the Winter Olympics this year. NBC’s viewership was down 24% compared to Sochi among viewers in the 18-49 year old age group. (This is the age group that is most coveted by the advertisers.) Although there are multiple reasons for this ratings drop-off, I think that the remarks and attitudes of some of the Olympians played a large role in the poor TV ratings.
It started with the carrying of the flag at the opening ceremonies. An African-American sped skater complained that he was not carrying the flag, because the American Olympic Committee was racially biased against him. Strike one. I did not watch the Opening Ceremonies, as I am tired of the cries of racism in those decisions that are not racial. FYI, this speed skater did not win anything.
Next came the appearance the North Korean dictator’s sister at the games. The liberal press did not hesitate to praise her, while at the same time taking potshots at Vice President Pence for a multitude of nefarious reasons. I like Mike Pence, and I do not think that he should have kowtowed to Kim Jong Un’s representative. Strike two.
My wife not only looks forward to both the Summer and the Winter Olympics, but she also watches a lot of them on TV. It seemed to me that every time I looked up at the TV, I saw the gay US figure skater, Adam Rippon being interviewed on NBC . . . again and again and again! Now I personally do not care if Adam is gay or not, but quickly grew tired of him and gay skier Gus Kenworthy bashing our Vice President. Rippon criticized the choice of Mike Pence as the ceremonial leader of the U.S. delegation, but when Pence offered to meet with him, Rippon declined, and then said that he would not attend the White House with Team USA. FYI, he did not win any medals! Likewise I quickly grew tired of NBC’s recurrent reporting of Kenworthy saying that he would not shake Pence’s hand. Who cares? Lindsey Vonn had stated that she would not travel to the White House to celebrate her victories. FYI, she did not have any victories, and did not win any medals! Strike three . . . Out!
There is a difference, however, between the low TV ratings for the NFL and the low ratings for the Olympics on NBC. Those TV networks that broadcast the NFL games were innocent bystanders, whereas it seemed that the liberal NBC was pushing its political agenda in its broadcasts, and I suspect that this turned off many people. NBC deserved their low ratings as I think that many did what I did. They turned off the TV and the Olympics.

Finally someone is listening! This problem of school shootings has been a major issue since at least 1999 when the massacre of high school students occurred at Columbine High School. Since then there have been multiple similar incidents at schools, including grade schools, high schools, and colleges. Those on the left immediately go into the trite “ban the guns” mode, while those on the right revert to the “protecting second amendment rights” mode, and nothing gets done. Since 1999, the country has gone through eight years of a Republican president and eight years of a Democrat president, and nothing has been accomplished. We have had years of a Democrat Congress, and now we are into the second year of a Republican Congress, and nothing is getting done to try to solve this problem . . . until now.
Finally someone is trying to approach this problem without immediately going into the “ban-the-guns”/”protect second amendment rights” tug-a-war, in which no progress has been made.
On 2/22/2018, President Trump had a meeting with families that have been affected by gun violence in our schools. During this meeting President Trump did what he does very well . . . He listened. He spent more than one hour listening to parents and adolescents whose lives have been irreversibly altered by school shootings. He listened to parents of children killed at Columbine, Sandy Hook, and Parkland Stoneman Douglas. He listened to a student whose friend was killed at Stoneman Douglas. It was a respectful setting as opposed to the CNN quasi-political forum that morphed into a loud, angry, scripted, vengeful session that basically achieved nothing. At one point during the White House meeting Mr. Andrew Pollack, who daughter was murdered by Nikolas Cruz at the Parkland high school, made a practical point when he said that school safety needed to be the first priority, and then gun laws could be debated later. “How many schools, how many children have to get shot?”
At one point President Trump said, “We’ll solve this together.”
Finally, I realize that, for whatever reason, about half of the country does not approve of Donald Trump. So be it. But let’s give credit where credit is due, here he has stepped up to the plate whereas the past two two-term presidents have stayed in the on-deck circle. Since Columbine Congress has spent the last 19 years in the dugout, doing what they do very well . . . they have shouted back and forth, and have accomplished nothing with regard to this issue. Will President Trump accomplish anything substantial? It’s too early to tell, but he is in the game. Those of you who do not like our president should at least do what real Americans should do well . . . Get behind him on this issue, give him a chance, and hope that he can finally put a stop to these senseless shootings.

What is the best way to pay for the restoration and repair of the infrastructure of the nation’s roads. Basically there are two general pays to pay for this expense.
First, one could argue that since everyone benefits in some way from good roads, (for instance the trucks that use the roads deliver food that everyone eats), all should chip in for their upkeep etc. If one accepts this logic, then the cost would come out of a general fund.
On the other hand one could argue that most if not all of this expense should be borne by those that use these roads. It only makes sense to have the users pay for their maintenance and repair.
Recently President Trump said that he would consider an increase in the federal gas tax to pay for this infrastructure repair. In an ideal world those that used the roads the most would pay the most, and the revenue collected from this gas tax would then pay for road maintenance and repair. The Democrats in California have bought into this paradigm, and have recently increased the gas tax in California by 12 cents per gallon. Of course in California, prior funds that were supposed to be allocated for roads seem to have “disappeared’! (A topic for another day.)
However, as in California, this proves to be a regressive way to fund road maintanence.
There are multiple reasons that this is an unfair system. To start, under this system, those who can afford to buy electric cars pay nothing to maintain and repair the roads. The electric car users use the roads as much as everybody else, but because they do not buy gas, they pay no gasoline tax. In addition those who can afford to buy hybrids would pay significantly less as they get very good gas mileage and thus use much less gas. So despite the fact that they also use the roads just as much as everybody else, they would pay much less to maintain and repair them. When the rose-colored glasses are removed, it is the poorest among us who will be forced to pay the most. Of course one might argue that because they usually have to live the furthest from where they work, they use the roads more than the average-Joe, and so they should pay the most. But the dilemma here is that for the most part, they cannot afford electric cars or hybrids. The older cars that they drive do not get the best gas mileage, and so they will use more gas for a variety of reasons and thus will bear the brunt of this regressive tax.
In my opinion there are but two ways to level the playing field. You can tax individuals by the number of miles that they drive – the more miles one drives, the more one should pay to maintain and repair the roads. Although this might be the penultimate of fairness, because electric cars and hybrids would pay their fair share, it would be impossible to administer. The other option is to apply a federal tax across the board to every car when the state license plate is renewed yearly. Is this option perfect? Heck no, and I suspect that the solution lies somewhere between “fair” and “regressive.”

The idea of having a census every ten years seems like a rational and reasonable common sense concept. As the population of the U.S. increases and the distribution of this population changes, it only makes sense to tabulate and record these changes. Those states that have a significant increase in population should logically have an increase in representation in Congress, whereas states that lose a considerable proportion of their populace should logically have less representation. Again common sense.
For example since the overall number of representatives in the House of Representatives is fixed, if a million citizens moved from Arizona to Utah, then Utah should gain and Arizona should lose representation in Congress. It is those sorts of changes that the census is supposed to pick up. What makes the census even more important is that the population of a state relative to the population of another state determines the distribution of federal monies between these states. As in the aforementioned Arizona-Utah example, more federal money would go to Utah and less to Arizona because of the population shift . . . again common sense.
So far, so good, until I read last week that California ‘s Attorney General, Xavier Becerra, is threatening to sue if the Trump administration includes a question regarding citizenship on the 2020 census. Wait just a second!
Does this mean that on the 2010 census, illegal immigrants were counted equally with citizens? Yes siree . . . not common sense!
Does that mean that a citizen of the USA has, in essence, the same representation in Congress as an illegal immigrant? Yes siree . . . again not common sense.
Does that mean that if two states have the same number of citizens living within their borders, but one state has a large number of illegal immigrants that the state with the illegals gets more federal money? Yes siree . . . again not common sense.
And then came the “Aha Moment,” as I began to understand why a state with a large illegal immigrant population, like California, would do just about anything to maintain and even increase its illegal population. For you see, a large number of illegals only serves to benefit that state with more representation in The House of Representatives, and can only potentially increase the federal funding that goes to that state. What Xavier Becerra and the Democratic politicians are concerned about, is the possibility that illegals will not fill out the census forms for fear of being identified as the non-citizens that they are.
After thinking about this issue, I am not sure which thing pisses me off the most.
The fact that citizens and non-citizens were equally counted on the 2010 census, and can potentially be equals again on the 2020 census. Not common sense!
or
The fact that states with a large number of illegals living within their borders have been rewarded with more federal monies, and more representation in Congress over the past ten years because of the 2010 census. Not common sense!
or
The fact that Xavier Becerra feels free to spend the money of the taxpayers of California in order to protect those illegals who, for the most part, do not pay taxes.
or
The fact that common sense can be do blatantly disregarded.

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Today while skimming through the letters-to-the-editor in my local newspaper, I noticed an interesting phenomena, which poses an interesting question. “Can you predict the political leanings of an individual by merely looking at the person’s name?” Of course the logical answer to this should be “No”, but read on.
For the most part you are born with a certain last name, unless your mother decided on some hyphenated neologism . . . but that is a topic for another day! Your first name is usually bestowed on you by your parents, irrespective whether they are hippie, straight, or whatever. Could a person’s first name provide a clue to his or her political leanings?
In regard to today’s newspaper’s letters my first name speculation is not gender related, as those with rightward tendencies were named both Susan and Russ. It should be noted, however, that the name, William, was seemingly always associated with a conservative opinion . . . now please note that I said William, and not Bill or Bubba! However it was the liberal letters that sparked my curiosity, as there were leftward leaning letters from Hallie, Raychel, and Bunny. Now obviously I cannot tell the ages of Hallie, Raychel, or Bunny, but come on, who names their precious little new baby, Bunny? (BTW, I did once know a woman named Bambi, but she did not write letters-to-the-editor or perhaps she just did not sign her real name.) Is Hallie a real name? I know, I know, Hallie Berry, but is this just a shortened form of Hallelujah? Raychel with a Y? . . . even my spell-check could not adjust to this one.
On the male side I did note that one of the liberal males signed with the elitist name of R. Lowell Smith. His first name is R. Lowell? I wonder if his friends call him R., Lowell, or Mr. Smith. (I doubt if he would respond to Smitty or Lefty!)
I realize that this sort of idle speculation about first names might seem to be far out, but so were my observations about bumper stickers . . . that is before you started paying attention!

“I don’t like dat,” spouts my two year old granddaughter. At what point do you explain to her that if she doesn’t like something, she does not have to use it, play with it, or eat it, but she cannot expect others to not use it, to not play with it, or to not eat it just because she “doesn’t like dat?” Just because she doesn’t like to play hopscotch, doesn’t mean that nobody else should play it. Just because she doesn’t like Curious George on T.V., doesn’t mean that her sister cannot watch it. Just because she doesn’t like tomatoes, doesn’t mean that they should not be grown in her parent’s garden. It’s probably not necessary to explain the intricacies of different likes and dislikes to her at age two or three, but I would hope that her parents, who are educators, would attempt some explanation before she is twenty-three!
Why age twenty-three? Well on the front page of this morning’s local “newspaper” there is a story about Savanah Lyon, a 23 year old theater major at U.C.San Diego.
Who is Savanah Lyon, and why is she on the front page?
She is a student at U.C.S.D. who is demanding that the school stop teaching a course on Woody Allen’s films because he has been accused, but never charged with, the sexual abuse of his daughter. Apparently Ms. Lyon noticed the class, “The Films of Woody Allen,” in a school catalog before she was actually a student at the school, and
and has recently started an online campaign to stop Professor Steven Adler from teaching this Woody Allen’s film course.
Lyon doesn’t believe that silencing Adler, the prize winning theater professor who teaches the course, violates the First Amendment, which she describes “as a law written by a bunch of white men. . . . It was written in the 1700s – the late 1700s. I mean those men were experiencing things that are completely different than they are now. (It’s) outdated” (Has U.C.S.D. lowered its admission standards?)
When asked how it was outdated, she replied, “Well it protected Donald Trump when he said – a breath of offensive things.” (“I don’t like dat!”)
Aha!! Now to me things become a bit more clear!
It seems that what we have here is a snowflake in Southern California; a snowflake who has collected 15,000 additional snowflakes with her online campaign and is now trying to build a snowman ( err, I mean a snow-person) in order to attract attention to her demands. (“If I don’t like hopscotch, then no one should be allowed to play hopscotch!!”) I wonder if she was ever taught about either likes and dislikes in general or the First Amendment in particular by her parents who also happen to be educators.
Speaking more generally, Angelo Corlett, an ethicist at San Diego State stated, “I am offended by people who are easily offended. People must get rid of the idea that they have a right not to be offended. There is no legal or moral right to it.”
Well, Professor Corlett, I am offended that the San Diego Union Tribune put this snowflake on the front page!

By pure serendipity some envelopes with the name Judge André Birotte Jr. have come into my possession. These unstamped envelopes were most likely found on the ground near the U.S.courthouse in Los Angeles where Judge Birotte has his courtroom. Last week this judge issued a ruling that said that police violate the Constitution if they detain inmates at the request of immigration agents. His ruling was 48 pages long . . . he’s no Judge Judy who is known for her brevity.
Yes, that is the same Judge Birotte who in February, 2017 issued a temporary restraining order against the executive order that President Trump signed in January, 2017. Not surprisingly, he was appointed as a federal district judge by Barack Obama in 2014 . . . after B.O. had first appointed him as U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California in 2010.
Gee, I wonder if he’s a liberal?

Anyway, inside the envelopes were these three letters. (I have purposely not included the names of those who wrote these letters.)
The first one said, “Please do not make it so that these inmates can come back into my community. They are a major problem in our neighborhood. I beg you to allow ICE to take them into custody so that they cannot recruit my sons into their street gang.”

The second one said, “¡No entiendo! Por favor, seńor, no queremos este hombres en nuestro barrio. Gracias.”

The third one said, “If you release these crooks from jail, they will return to see their friends in this area. When this happens, the federal authorities will soon follow, looking for them. This is a sure way to have some of my neighbors and my good friends arrested and deported. Why do you favor these bad men over us decent hard-working people?”

I put these letters into a stamped envelope and addressed it properly:
Judge André Birotte Jr.
Courtroom 7B
350 West First St.
Los Angeles, CA

Perhaps he will read these letters and then understand how the unforeseen consequences of his liberal leanings are hurting those who he is trying to help. He is certainly no Judge Judy who is known for the wisdom of her rulings. I hope that he reads these letters before his latest ruling is overturned by a higher court . . . he’s no Judge Judy here either, as I do not think that her rulings have ever been overturned!

For years one of my favorite TV shows has been “The Goldbergs”, (although this year not so much). It takes place in ‘nineteen-eighty-something’ and is about a family with three kids that lives in the Philadelphia area. It is well written and each of the family members is well cast. The oldest son, Barry, is a member of an innocent group that call themselves, “JTP.” There are three members of the JTP, and at one point there is a fourth high school boy that wishes to join the JTP. Does he get into the JTP? I won’t spoil it for you, but one thing for sure is that the boy that wishes to get accepted into this club does not go around badmouthing Barry who was the defacto president of the JTP. Badmouthing Barry would have been counterproductive. To me this seems to be common-sense. Perhaps more people used common sense back in the eighties.

I was reminded of The Goldbergs, Barry, and the JTP as I was reading an article in this morning’s newspaper about a group of D.A.C.A. recipients who were demonstrating down by the US-Mexico border. Dulce Garcia, a D.A.C.A. recipient and immigration attorney was quoted as saying, “He’s bargaining for our lives, our livelihoods in exchange for our parents. That’s un-American. Our president is un-American.”

Wow! Besides the fact that because she is not a citizen, Donald Trump is not “her president,” I thought that that type of rhetoric could only be counterproductive. Certainly, someone trying to get into the JTP would not be dumb enough to badmouth Barry Goldberg. What law school did you go to, Dulce?

First, let’s clear up a few things about D.A.C.A.. The following should help, from Wikipedia: To be eligible, illegal immigrants must have entered the United States before their 16th birthday and prior to June 2007, be currently in school, a high school graduate or be honorably discharged from the military, be under the age of 31 as of June 15, 2012, and not have been convicted of a felony, significant misdemeanor or three other misdemeanors, or otherwise pose a threat to national security. The program does not provide lawful status or a path to citizenship, nor does it provide eligibility for federal welfare or student aid.

Where do these D.A.C.A. recipients come from? Again from Wikipedia: 74% of the eligible population was born in Mexico or Central America. Smaller proportions came from Caribbean and South America (11%), Asia (9%), and the rest of the world (6%).

Where do these D.A.C.A. recipients presently reside?
California – 424,995
Texas – 234,350
New York – 95,663
Illinois – 79,415
Florida – 74,321
Arizona – 51,503

How many potential D.A.C.A.recipients are there?
Somewhere between 650,000 and 1.8 million.

While I do feel sympathy for these individuals who are here through no fault of their own, I do not feel sympathy for their parents who gambled and entered the country illegally. Perhaps Dulce should place some of the blame for her conundrum on her parents. Perhaps Dulce should place some of the blame for this dilemma on President Obama who set up D.A.C.A. by executive decree, and thus created this mess.

To be clear, President Trump is trying to solve this problem. Yes, for sure he is a deal-maker, and he is trying to make a deal by parlaying the building a wall for a path to citizenship for 1.8 million potential D.A.C.A. recipients. However, keep in mind that the promise of building a wall is one of the things that got him elected . . . elected by actual citizens of the U.S.
My advice to Dulce Garcia:
”Close your mouth, keep your opinions to yourself, and watch more reruns of “The Goldbergs!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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