Our politicians and federal apparatchiks say they care about the poor and despise the rich.
Friday, February 16, 2024
High-Income Married Couples Can Get $117,000 a Year In Social Security Benefits: What the Hell!
Nevertheless, I notice
that our government gives out a lot of dough to rich people who don’t need
federal handouts. For example, the Cato
Institute reported yesterday that high-income married couples receive as much as $117,000 a year in Social Security benefits.
Quoting Forbes writer Andrew Biggs, the Cato report points out:
This is outrageous
when we consider that the average
Social Security check is less than $ 1,800 and that 40
percent of older Americans depend almost solely on their Social Security
checks to fund their retirement.
Put another way, Mitt
Romney and Nancy Pelosi will get bigger Social Security checks than
a Mississippi school teacher or some guy who worked all his life as an attendant
in a nursing home.
Cato recommends that
the U.S. follow Great Britain’s example and pay a flat-rate benefit to everyone—causing
benefits to rise for low-income earners and shrink for the rich.
Britons receive
about $34,000 in retirement benefits—regardless of lifetime earnings. If the U.S. switched to the British model,
millions of low-income Americans would have a more comfortable retirement, and our Social Security program costs would decrease.
There's just one
drawback: the British model for government retirement pensions would piss off American rich people. And that's something
Congress would never do.
Monday, February 12, 2024
President Biden, Ukraine, and Michelle Obama: Americans Are Sickened By Lies
Recently, I reread Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, and this passage struck me:
You know I hate, detest, and can't bear a lie, not because I
am straighter than the rest of us, but simply because it appalls me. There is a
taint of death, a flavor of mortality in lies--which is exactly what I hate and
detest in the world--what I want to forget. It makes me miserable and sick,
like biting something rotten would do.
I immediately
thought about our national life; it's one big lie. Media commentators and
Democratic Party hacks (Gavin
Newsom, Nancy
Pelosi, Kamala
Harris, etc.) claim that Joe Biden is a mentally competent and fully
functioning adult--that he has all his marbles and is making rational policy
decisions based on moral considerations and our national interests. But
that's a lie.
Biden is
suffering from severe cognitive decline and dementia. The symptoms grow worse with
each passing week. Everyone knows it, and the refusal of our political and
media elites to be honest about the President’s mental health is frightening.
President Biden,
the Democratic Party leadership, and the legacy media insist Biden is running
for a second term. That’s another lie. The puppeteers in the White House
rafters have already chosen Biden’s successor. I predict the new candidate will be announced this
summer shortly before the Democratic Party's National Convention. I believe that Michelle
Obama, not Joe Biden, will be on the presidential ballot next November.
I feel sure
that Biden’s handlers have already written the presidential decree pardoning Joe's
son Hunter and other family members of all their crimes. Undoubtedly, the
President has already signed that decree in case he keels over prematurely in
the coming months or is incapacitated by a stroke.
Our war
in Ukraine is another lie. Ukraine is losing that war, which has produced millions of refugees and
perhaps a million battle casualties. Although our government is lying about
it, the United States is directly at war with Russia, a nuclear power. For
what?
The people
propagating these gross lies don’t care that they are hiding the truth. Perhaps,
as Joseph Goebbels suggested, they have lied so many times that they’ve come to
believe the lies themselves.
However, I
think the White House press officers, the New York Times, CNN, and the Washington
Post know they’re lying about the Biden administration. And I think they
know that Americans don’t believe the bullshit they’re spewing.
They don’t care
that they’re being written off as liars and dissemblers. Why? The mainstream
press doesn't give a damn whether the American people think the press is trustworthy, and that’s scary.
Thursday, February 8, 2024
Screw Peoria! The Biden Adminstration Hates the Heartland
Until recently, “Will it play in Peoria?” was a familiar political aphorism. The question basically asks whether the American Heartland would approve a specific political action.
The Biden
administration and the Democratic Party’s goon squads don’t ask that question
anymore. Instead, they ask whether their various political activities will
insult the Heartland, hurt the middle class economically, or help erode
traditional American values. If the answer is yes, then it's full speed ahead!
Here are
some examples:
Biden’sbureaucrats advance the bizarre notion that men can compete in women’s varsity sports so long as they identify as being women. Trans women don’t even have to
castrate themselves—they just have to change their names and get a feminine haircut.
Another example. President Biden
has opened the nation’s southern border to anyone who crosses the Bravo,
including human traffickers, drug runners, and young men on the terrorist watch
list. Biden’s policy frightens, angers, and demoralizes most Americans—which surely warms the
hearts of the Democratic political operatives.
And here's one more example of the Biden team's contempt for Middle America. This year,
the Democratic Party began disparaging the presidential primaries in Iowa and
New Hampshire. Why? Because the populations of those two states are too white!
Biden prefers to start his anemic reelection campaign in South Carolina, where
the state’s registered Democrats are not so Caucasian.
Speaking of this
year’s presidential campaign, who believes President Biden will be on the ballot
this November? I don't. The man suffers from dementia. Next summer, the Democratic
Party’s hoodlums will introduce a replacement for ol’ crooked Joe—someone who didn’t
bother participating in the state primaries.
Oily-haired
Gavin Newsom and the cadaverous Nancy Pelosi breezily affirm that Joe Biden's
mental state is just fine, which is their way of saying they have nothing but
contempt for the average, everyday American voter. Hey, a demented geriatric is
the kind of president that Flyover Country deserves.
But here’s
the thing. Americans are beginning to despise the nation’s political class as much
as the politicians despise them. You would think that would scare the sleezebags
who run our government.
But they’re
not worried because they have ballot harvesting down to a science. The Dems are
going to win, no matter how the true vote count turns out.
That’s right:
The 2024 presidential election will be rigged—just like the 2020 election. But don't say that out loud, or Fani Willis
will arrest you.
Peoria sends its regards. |
Saturday, February 3, 2024
More Plagiarism at Harvard: Another Stain on the DEI Industry
And perhaps that’s Sherri Charleston’s position as well. Dr. Charleston, Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer at Harvard, has recently been accused of plagiarizing parts of her 2009 dissertation and a 2014 scholarly article published in the Journal of Negro Education. Gay and Charleton are both African American women, and both saw their careers blossom as American universities embraced Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI).
What do these two scandals tell us about DEI in higher education? First, DEI is an industry that has nothing to do with scholarship. DEI administrators are political officers, not academics. Harvard did not place Gay and Charleston in elevated positions because they have records of outstanding scholarship; they got their jobs because they had the credentials that would help Harvard advance its DEI agenda.
Second, DEI is a career path that is only open to racial minorities. If you scan the higher education landscape, you will find that the universities have hundreds of DEI administrators. I’ll buy you lunch at the Stockyard restaurant in North Baton Rouge if you can identify even one heterosexual white male in a DEI position.
Finally, the proliferation of DEI administrators has not promoted racial harmony on American college campuses. On the contrary, our nation has seen a shocking outbreak of antisemitism on university campuses in recent months—shocking enough to prompt Congress to hold hearings on the phenomenon. On the whole, the DEI commissars are indifferent to racism against Jews, as evidenced by Claudine Gay’s remarkably nuanced and legalistic response when she was asked whether calls for "genocide of Jews" violated Harvard’s policies on bullying and harassment.
In the coming months, we will see more scandals erupt as critics scan the academic credentials of university DEI officers. These scandals will show that the colleges don’t give a damn about their DEI apparatchiks' scholarly records. Sherri Charleston, for example, has been accused of plagiarizing passages in her dissertation from a book written by Professor Rebecca J. Scott, who co-chaired Charleston’s dissertation committee. Presumably, Professor Scott read Charleston’s dissertation drafts. It's odd, don’t you think, that Scott apparently didn’t realize that part of what she was reading came from her own book!
Monday, January 22, 2024
Help Me, Obi-Wan Nikki Haley: You're My Only Hope
Until yesterday afternoon, I was depressed about this year's presidential election. It seemed inevitable that Americans would be forced to choose between Joe Biden and Donald Trump as our next President. Both men are highly unattractive. Biden is a crime boss who has dementia, and Trump's flaws are too numerous to summarize briefly.
Then, the
political landscape changed in an instant. Governor Ron DeSantis dropped
out of the presidential race yesterday afternoon, and now Americans have three
stark choices for our country's next President.
We can
choose Joe Biden--or, more likely—the mystery candidate who will replace him
when he drops out of the presidential race next summer for health reasons.
We can back Donald
Trump, the runaway favorite Republican nominee. He's the odds-on favorite among
conservative voters.
Or we can vote
for former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley—the last remaining Republican to
challenge Donald Trump for the Republican nomination.
If I get the
opportunity, I will vote for Nikki Haley. She is eminently qualified to be the President
of the United States, and for me, her chief attraction is that she is not Trump
or Biden.
I have been
disappointed by dark-horse presidential candidates in the past. I supported
Bernie Sanders in 2016 and later realized he's just another political hack. I
once thought Elizabeth Warren would make a good president because of her stance
on student loans and corporate greed. But she's just another political hack who
never did anything substantive to help working-class Americans,
I'm throwing my support to Nikki Haley. To borrow a line from Star Wars, Help us, Obi-Wan Nikki Haley. You're our only hope.
Sunday, January 21, 2024
Busted for Sedition! I Bought A Carhartt Shirt at Bass Pro Shop
Federal investigators asked banks to scour customer transactions for . . . purchases at stores including Dick's Sporting Goods and Bass Pro Shops . . .
Daily Mail.com, January 18, 2024
In my backyard, I saw ten or twelve SWAT team members dressed in black, wearing Kevlar, and carrying assault rifles. Uh-oh, I thought, I must have skipped a payment on my Chase credit card.
But it was far more serious than that. At the Justice Department's direction, my bank analyzed my credit card records and discovered I had purchased two Carhartt shirts at Bass Pro Shop. The Feds read me my rights and arrested me on two counts of sedition.
I mortgaged my house to hire the best criminal attorney in Baton Rouge—Robert Hufflepuff. "You've been caught red-handed," Hufflepuff told me, "and the evidence against you is overwhelming.
"It's only a matter of time," Hufflepuff added, "before the FBI finds out about those mittens you bought at Cabela's. And how will you explain that copy of Saint Teresa of Avila's autobiography on your bookshelf? Religious literature is another extremism indicator."
On my lawyer’s advice, I made a full confession and agreed to rat out my relatives and go into the witness protection program. I have a big family, and the Feds arrested dozens of my nieces, nephews, brothers-in-law, and ex-brothers-in-law. All of them had bought stuff from Bass Pro Shop, Cabela's, or Dick’s Sporting Goods, and a few had some religious books in their homes. It was the biggest bust of treason plotters since Waco.
I've learned a lot from this traumatic episode. I now realize I should have never bought those Carhartt shirts from Bass Pro Shop. If I had bought them from Academy Sports, the FBI wouldn’t have arrested me, and about two dozen of my relatives wouldn’t be facing hard time in a federal prison.
Second, the FBI witness protection program is not as glamorous as you might think. I hoped to make a fresh start in a charming city like San Francisco. Maybe I could get a gig as a hedge fund manager and pull down some big bucks.
Unfortunately, my FBI handler only offered me one option: a new identity as a Baptist preacher in Dry Prong, Louisiana. I decided to take my chances.
Fooling All of the People Some of the Time: Retired People, Working-Class Families, and Peope Living on Fixed Incomes are Suffering Under Bidenomics
You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.
Abraham Lincoln
Today’s report shows that we ended 2023 with inflation down nearly two-thirds from its peak and core inflation at its lowest level since May 2021. We saw prices go down over the course of the year for goods and services that are important for American households, like a gallon of gas, a gallon of milk, a dozen eggs, toys, appliances, car rentals, and airline fares. Despite what many forecasters predicted a year ago, inflation is down while growth and the job market have remained strong.
Of course, that's total bullshit, and Americans all know it--at least all the Americans who do their own grocery shopping. Week after week, I go to my local grocery store and am shocked at the price of nearly everything.
I know, however, that I am more fortunate than many of my fellow Americans. I'm retired, but I don't depend solely on Social Security to pay my bills. However, one out of seven retired Americans live almost totally on their monthly Social Security checks. And the average Social Security check is only about $1700.
Who can live on that? Nobody.
President Biden is about to demonstrate the truth of one of Abraham Lincoln's most famous observations. Biden fooled millions of people during the 2020 presidential campaign by hiding his cognitive decline and his family's influence-peddling racket. The obsequious mainstream media pitched a wild yarn about Bidenomics that has fooled some Americans to this day. Incredibly, almost a third of Americans believe Sleepy Joe is doing a good job managing the economy.
But Lincoln was right: you can't fool all the people all the time. Now, we are in the 2024 presidential primary season, and Biden is about to see that millions of Americans have figured out that they are losing ground economically. Retired people, people living on fixed incomes, and working-class families by the millions are going to vote for Donald Trump or Nikki Haley.