The end times for mankind (womankind?) have been long predicted, but slow to arrive – fortunately.

Keep watching. Here is one man’s list of possible, but very unlikely events, that should they occur would suggest Armageddon draws nigh.

Republican Senator Mitch McConnell and his ilk grow some backbone and remember they aren’t Democrats.

Liberal politicians and lapdog media express horror and condemnation for riots and ongoing civil unrest perpetrated by the likes of Antifa and Black Lives Matter.

The unholy trinity that is the face of the Democratic party, Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, go a solid month without executing mammoth verbal gaffes. January is out after Schumer said the other day that Senators will decide at their impeachment trial if former President Trump “incited the ERECTION against the United States.” Too much info, Chuck.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, AKA Mr. FlipFlop Contradiction, tells the same story on successive days, in successive interviews, regarding COVID-19 and its related topics.

Biden and Pelosi go cold turkey on Botox injections. Can you say Prune Face?

CNN, MSNBC and network news renounce their propaganda roles for liberal causes and pledge to be more evenhanded in their coverage moving forward, going so far as to return to traditional journalistic roles.

Hunter Biden shows up in the unemployment line.

Sham eponymous foundations set up to serve as slush funds for political contributions are called to account for decades of chicanery.

Those supposedly independent “fact checkers” are fact checked and found to have only a passing acquaintance with reality.

Lamestream media goes an entire month without mentioning Donald Trump and continuing their collective efforts to destroy him.

The truth is finally acknowledged that virus-mandated lockdowns and business shutdowns actually killed more people than the virus when you factor in increases in suicides, murders, domestic abuse, overdoses and major maladies going undiagnosed because people feared going to health facilities and mingling with the possibly infected populace.

There will be an end to elite hypocrisy regarding the virus, things like warning the sheep to stay home, but going on vacations; dictating masks for all at all times, then being photographed mask-less; or closing businesses like beauty parlors to the public, but re-opening them for a quick personal touchup.

The federal government acknowledges that its inflation numbers vastly understate the actual price inflation rate and long have done so.

Big tech gets religion and stops trying to be digital despots, subjugating and manipulating the populace with malice aforethought.

Hillary Clinton says no to any interview request from any liberal mouthpiece.

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts remembers he’s supposed to follow the Constitution, not make political assessments that are profiles in fence-straddling.

Parents begin to take more active roles in the schooling of their children, demanding that political indoctrination under the guise of education must cease.

The public realizes that governmental handouts are not a long-term solution and demands fiscal restraint from its leaders.

Democrats stop blaming everything on Russians and start looking at a more legitimate boogeyman, China

We’re living in an ongoing story that parallels The Emperor’s New Clothes, without the possibility of an innocent child ending the suspension of reality.

For those unfamiliar with the story line of the emperor’s clothes, a couple of con men show up in a land ruled over by a king addicted to fine clothing and promise to weave cloth for garments of untold beauty.

The catch is the cloth and garments are said to be invisible to morons and incompetents.

The con men pretend to weave cloth and make clothes, but merely go through the motions. Predictably, no one wants to admit publicly that they don’t see any cloth being weaved lest they be ridiculed by others unwilling to admit to reality.

This comports neatly with our present rush by cancel culture and leftists in general to label as racists, terrorists, insurrectionists, deniers, cult members, purveyors of hate speech or just plain idiots, anyone with the temerity to speak out about the pet crusades of the liberals.

Rather than risk such public labeling, the common people deny their eyes and remain silent.

In the folk tale, it takes a child crying out as the emperor parades in the buff that the guy has no clothes, for reality to intrude and be embraced by the masses.

And I’m reminded of a scene from the past summer in our living room when our eight-year-old granddaughter, witnessing a televised virus briefing by Pennsylvania’s gender-confused health official, asked in dismay, “Why is that guy dressed like a woman?”

Why, indeed?

Hypocrisy is not merely a function of the political left. It’s just that the leftists claim to see it continuously on the other end of the political spectrum, but can’t recognize blatant examples in their ranks.

I pointed out sometime back in a column for the local rag that Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg trying to build a wall around his Hawaii estate to keep out legitimate landowners was quite ironic considering his outspoken condemnation of a U.S. border wall with Mexico.

When Hawaiians publicly chastised Zuckerberg for this contradiction, he retreated from the issue into the shadows, but his work to take over the Hawaiian properties and complete his wall continued.

This evening, during a routine visit to zerohedge.com, a web site that should be must-see for anyone eager to read stories the Lamestream media will not promote, I found a post there regarding Jeff Bezos, yet another mega-rich guy who thinks the rules that apply to you should not apply to him.

Whether it is lording over his Amazon workers by beating down unionizing attempts, or making sure only his viewpoint is spewed by The Washington Post, a one-time standard of journalism that Bezos now owns, Bezos appears to have a double dose of the hypocrite gene.

Amazon workers, unhappy with their working conditions, have been attempting to unionize at various locations. This includes most recently an Alabama warehouse.

But Amazon has made a formal request to the National Labor Relations Board that the election to decide whether or not the Alabama workers go union should not allow mail-in voting (too subject to fraud or coercion) and the NLRB should reconsider allowing the workers extra time – two months – to vote (too long).

Somehow these concerns sound vaguely familiar.

Of course some will say this is Amazon, not Bezos, making the request. Well, if you believe Amazon does anything without Bezos both knowing and approving, you are a naive individual, indeed.

I don’t recall Amazon mobilizing its considerable money and public relations machinery to question potential fraud in the most recent presidential election due to massive mail-in voting, or to raise doubts over increasing the time window for voting. Nary a whisper was heard from Amazon.

There was a time in this country when the public and media in concert would have called out this sort of Bezos-Amazon hypocrisy.

Alas, those times are but fleeting memories. This won’t change until the majority of the population that still believes in traditional morals and values grows some backbone and speaks out en masse.

It’s already been too long of a wait for that to happen. But a man can dream.

Talk about getting off to a running start, Joe Biden hadn’t even been sworn in as President Wednesday when his staff made public plans for 17 executive orders.

When outgoing President Trump displayed a proclivity to use executive orders to institute policies, he was roundly panned by Biden’s Democratic Party. Now that Joe’s wielding the pen, nothing but the sound of crickets and zero screeching outrage from Pelosi and Schumer as well as the left-wing Lamestream media.

Here is some perspective on executive orders as compiled on the UC-Santa Barbara web site.

With 17 on one day, Biden has exceeded the total executive orders of this nation’s first five presidents combined – George Washington (8), John Adams (1), Thomas Jefferson (4), James Madison and James Monroe (1 each).

Trump issued 204 executive orders in four years. At this rate, Biden should hit 204 in 12 DAYS. Joe will slow down of course, but I’m betting on him surpassing Trump if Biden lasts four years, particularly if things get tough and his slim majorities in the House of Representatives and Senate are hamstrung by some party defectors refusing to go down the socialism route.

If some of these elected representatives aren’t willing to step up, the next president will be sworn in not with his hand on a Bible, but on a copy of “Das Kapital,” the Karl Marx tome talking down capitalism and promoting socialism.

Predictably, left-wing media outlets have been fawning over Biden, including one CNN hack. I don’t watch CNN, preferring to keep my dinner from forcibly exiting my throat, but I do read when others note their ridiculous extremes.

This CNN sycophant, “reporting” Tuesday, likened lights on the reflecting pool to Biden’s welcoming arms around the nation. It was an unintentional metaphor for what has been described as creepy physical behavior by Biden.

Even on face value, some critics were moved to note it’s starting to sound like “reporting” from state-run media in places such as North Korea.

And why shouldn’t it be?

Already Biden and his surrogates are ducking questions about Chinese funding of a pair of academic operations bearing his name at universities in Delaware and Pennsylvania. Never fear, those questions will not be asked by anyone but the fringe media that speaks for the common folk of this country.

As with Hunter Biden’s job history and various other Joe Biden shortcomings (plagiarism, allegations of sexual assault, and generally creepy behavior around women), nothing to see here. Keep moving.

Meanwhile, breathless and hysterical reporting about threats of violence, first at state capitals and then during the inauguration, were found to be more narrative overreach designed to further denigrate without proof all the morons foolish enough to have support Trump’s re-election.

But Joe wants unity! That’s unity as in it’s my way or the highway. Sign on with socialism, lack of freedom and privacy, excessive governmental control of everyday life and you’re with the gang.

Insist on freedoms guaranteed by our Constitution and you are a far-right insurrectionist trying to subvert the will of the people.

Monolithic thought enforced by governments in concert with big tech is many things, but unity it is not.

Investment influencers of public opinion did their best to get Biden off on the right foot, with Bank of America pronouncing this moment is “the beginning of the end of the COVID crisis.”

Already incoming Treasury Secretary and former Federal Reserve chairman Janet Yellen called for “big” stimulus action at her Senate confirmation hearing.

Big action means big spending, dollars being handed out that the government needs to borrow first.

Even as Biden was taking his oath today, inflation was being anticipated in various investment fields with the stock market, gold, silver, and stocks, all running up. Bitcoin, which is coming into the governmental crackdown crosshairs, declined.

Previously, many formerly draconian Democratic politicians, be they governors of blue states or mayors of blue major cities, had preached the gospel of lockdowns and shutdowns. Now they’re looking to open things up immediately if not sooner, presumably because Biden’s 100-day mask mandate order is magic, so much better than the vaccines that the Trump Operation Warp Speed delivered months before the skeptics thought was possible.

If you’re confused by it all, you need to understand that we now reside in a world in which conventional wisdom has been stood on its ear, and kicked in the groin for good measure.

Just remember, we’ve got at least two more years of this – presuming hopefully that if Democrats screw the pooch so badly until the next mid-term elections that the populace strikes back.

This further presumes accurate vote counting, but one dream at a time.

At this pace there will be dizzying change, most of it for the worse. Schumer could be taken literally when he pronounced in the wake of the Georgia runoff election sweep by Democrats, “buckle up.”

Yogi Berra, the ex-baseball player with the nickname befitting a sporting philosopher, is credited with observing “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”

And often that is correct, such as in pursuits like sports betting.

Consider examples like taking Kansas City to cover an 8.5-point spread against Cleveland in an NFL playoff game Sunday and having things in hand at the half, only to see KC quarterback Patrick Mahomes scuttle that by suffering a concussion and leaving the game. KC still won, just not by enough to cover the spread.

So, the Chiefs won, but their backers who gave the 8.5 points lost.

Some predictions are much easier than picking NFL games against the spread. I’m on the record for as much as the past 16 months assuring any who asked that Trump would not be re-elected as president because the Democrats realized they had let down their guard when Hillary Clinton lost to him, and would leave no stone unturned – legal or illegal – to prevent a recurrence.

If you’ve been paying attention, you know that came to pass.

I also predicted that for all the hype and expectation about election theft being corrected by courts or Congress, electoral votes would be counted and certified for Biden. I didn’t anticipate the Capitol incursion which gave the weak-kneed Republicans an out, but it would have gone down the same way, even without it.

Thank you again to our largely gutless Republicans at the national level.

There are more sure-pop predictions to be made about coming days, weeks, or months in the political sphere.

To start, Joe Biden will not make it four years as president. Whether he succumbs to disease, is deemed mentally incompetent by his own people, or meets a mysterious death – think Vince Foster’s convenient suicide – four years is not going to happen. Also:

• Biden will have numerous gaffes in his first State of the Union Address. The most amusing likely will be him again mixing up VP Kamala Harris and his wife, DR. JILL BIDEN!!!!!!. Joe also might mis-speak yet again about being a Senator instead of President. Or he might again brag about having the best voter fraud organization in history. Make no mistake, Joe will jam his foot into his mouth at some point, but his Lamestream Media sycophants will ignore or misdirect the verbal farts much in the same way the elderly passing gas at family gatherings have relatives blame the dog to cover for them.
• Biden has made news by saying that he’s going to send a bill to Congress offering citizenship to 11 million illegal immigrants. Subsequent investigation will reveal that is a mere formality since those 11 million already were able to vote in the last election – all for Biden.
• Emboldened by the poll that showed that 65 percent of voters, regardless of party affiliation, approved of $2,000 per person stimulus handouts for the length of the COVID-19 pandemic and perhaps beyond, Biden will propose making them evergreen, as in never-ending. He also will ratchet up his $15 minimum wage to $35 an hour, thereby bring all into the middle class, or so his handlers tell him.
• Biden will criticize harshly the 10,000-plus mask-less citizens demonstrating over the weekend against virus lockdowns and urge them just to follow his request to wear a mask for 100 more days and all will be well. When his keepers tell Biden the demonstrations were in Vienna, Austria, Joe will blame the Russians.
• Hunter Biden will land numerous high-paying posts for which he exhibits no particular expertise. Asked about Hunter, Joe will blame the Russians.
• Heads of state visiting the White House will note how curious it is that Biden always serves them Chinese food. Both Joe and Hunter will blame the Russians.
• When mandated releases of government information regarding UFOs are made, revealing longstanding cover-ups by the United States, Biden will blame the Russians.
• House speaker Nancy Pelosi, taking a break from binge-eating high-priced ice cream, will pile on the language war in Congress that has ruled out such terms as chairman, seaman, mother, daughter, brother, etc., with one moron extending that to substituting for Amen at the end of a prayer. Henceforth, aMENdment, MANdates, MANsion, MANifest destiny, MENdicant state, noMENclature, yeoMANry, necroMANcy and the MANn act will need to have gender-neutral euphemisms drummed up for them, otherwise they cannot be spoken of in our hallowed halls. This time, Biden won’t blame the Russians, but it would be fitting if he did since Pelosi is taking a page from the communist playbook of the Russians and their ilk.

Na Zdorovie!

Days before the Biden inauguration, with a planned armed military presence designed to stifle protest that will be worthy of a banana republic, it is both sad and enlightening to see that the hypocrisy of the presidential campaign and its operatives will continue uninterrupted into the regime.

Let us count the ways.

Begin with the narratives of the Biden apologist and Trump hating Lamestream media, who have been quick to paint The Capitol riots as the work of typical Trump supporters. CNN interviewed a couple of the people on hand, neither of them Trump supporters, for insight.

It turns out that one interview subject is a female making a documentary of the other, a male Black Lives Matter activist.

But were they reporting or participating?

In another bit of video that said female didn’t want aired but was posted on social media, she is heard laughing and saying “We did it!’ while hugging Mr. Black Lives Matter, who ostensibly was there solely to document the event but encouraged others to misbehave and allegedly misbehaved himself.

It was all good fun, except Mr. Black Lives Matter went and got himself collared because, according to an FBI affidavit, the G-men heard him on video yelling things such as “we about to burn this (stuff) down” and “we accomplished this (stuff). We did this together. (Expletive) yeah! We are all a part of this history.”

I suspected that Mr. Black Lives Matter didn’t vote for Trump, nor support the president. This was confirmed with a quick internet search that turned up a report that Mr. Black Lives Matter also faces criminal charges in connection with a Provo, Utah, protest he organized in June.

In the TV report, Mr. Black Lives Matter characterized himself as a supporter of that group, not Trump.

Ms. Filmmaker is heard wondering nervously on the social media video if all this interaction is being filmed and then being assured it would be deleted.

It wasn’t deleted.

The Associated Press got comment from Ms. Filmmaker when this all blew up in her face on the very same social media she likely uses to cyber-brag about her exploits. Explained Ms. Filmmaker about her worry regarding the tape’s deletion: “I am incredibly private.”

Hint to Ms Filmmaker: Don’t show up and participate in public events doing things of which you don’t care to cyber-brag, allow someone to video you, then expect privacy.

Hint II: In the future, consider giving such concern for privacy to those whose images you capture in similar circumstances.

In the kind of unfortunate overreach that dominates what I prefer to call Un-social media, it was misstated that Ms. Filmmaker was a CNN employee. No, she’s just a CNN guest and a general freelancer who has worked for, among others, National Public Radio, the latter not exactly being a Republican bastion.

Other protesters/rioters have been identified who most certainly are not Trump supporters, but they are given short shrift in media reports.

Were the bulk of the people behaving badly at The Capitol Trump supporters? I’d argue they were. But just as our military and intelligence outfits can mobilize masses of “freedom fighters” in foreign lands with just a handful of “advisers” sprinkled in their ranks, I’m thinking the flames were stoked at The Capitol protest by agitators placed strategically to take advantage of the situation.

Again, this does not excuse those who broke the law. It does, however, invite a fuller picture to be reported rather than just telling us what fits the narrative.

No narrative has been larger than the need to shut down the economy and lock down the masses to fight COVID-19, a disease that almost exclusively kills the old and sick, but pretty much gives the young and healthy the equivalent of a bad cold.

With the smash hit “Harris-Biden Comes To D.C.” about to open in said town, talk fills the Democratic halls of power of the need to re-open the economy. Left unsaid is this is to help Harris-Biden, just as screeching for and mandating lockdowns was designed to harm Trump and maybe combat the virus as a side benefit.

No less a flip-flopper than Democrat New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said this week it’s time to forget all the shutting down of businesses because the alternative is “We will have nothing left to open.”

Democrat Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot is a repeat visitor to the well of hypocrisy. She chastised her citizens to stay home because “getting your roots done is not essential” then went out to get her hair trimmed.

Caught in the act, Lightfoot’s excuse was “I’m the public face of this city”

And not a pretty one at that, either literally or figuratively.

These days Lightfoot thinks bars and restaurant should re-open their indoor facilities “as quickly as possible.”

Why would she say this when Chicago infection rates are up? Because Lightfoot is following the science – political science.

Got to help Joe look good because, God knows, he needs all the help he can get.

Already some in Biden’s leftist coalition are unhappy. The proposed stimulus checks have been marked down from $2,000 to $1,400, because Biden is including the most recent $600 checks issued during President Trump’s term.

If Biden also subtracts the $1,200 from the first Trump stimulus checks, we’re down to $200 net.

Biden also has put out an opening proposal of $10,000 in student debt forgiveness, which has been widely panned as totally insufficient for those who ran up $100,000 or more in debt getting their degree in various unneeded disciplines.

Biden did call for a $15 minimum wage, which should guarantee that those on the low end of the wage scale will have minimum job opportunities as well as minimum totals of hours worked going forward.

The Green New Deal must wait for Biden actually to warm the desk chair in the Oval Office, but if he can’t do better than $1.9 trillion to start, the supposed total cost of this current proposed stimulus package, he’s not going to get praise from his socialist enablers on that front, either.

Rest assured, though, that criticism of Biden will be muted by the media as we spend months and perhaps years pillorying Trump and his supporters, trying to resurrect an economy put on life support mainly by Democrats in Blue States and Cities, and generally continuing the disinformation campaign that, along with electoral mischief, swept Harris-Biden into office.

One of the recurring themes through the ages is advice to the successful to tend toward moderation in victory celebrations and to show similar restraint in visiting retribution on the losers.

The metaphors differ, but the message is the same.

From the Biblical “Vengeance is Mine,” to admonitions about not poking bears or kicking sleeping dogs, those who would revel in hubris are cautioned to be modest in the aftermath of their successes.

Beyond that, superiors – or those who think they are above the rest – also are reminded to keep a lid on their egos, if only for their benefit.

An example of that comes from the world of online poker, where weak players who are apt to play poorly and therefore donate their money to better players, are characterized as “fish.”

Online poker has a chat function and too many players feel the need to chastise these “fish” for their poor play. Wiser heads advise these braggart winners not to tap on the aquarium glass, as in don’t scare off the “fish” – and their easily won money.

But the would-be poker geniuses just can’t seem to help themselves.

So it is in the current political climate, with Democrats, heady at their impending control of the federal government, now aligning with their Unholy Trinity partners of big tech and mainstream media to gloat and just as important, cut off means to respond.

They have decided they are going to make their enemies embark on a massive walk of shame, for eternity if possible.

Those foolish people who backed President Trump, or even worse worked for him, must be called to task for . . . what? Answer: They need to be punished for having the temerity to disagree with their socialist masters, the deep-state alliance.

It feels good for these far-left ideologues to inflict pain on those they have defeated in this election, even though said defeat may have been as much a function of a hacked scoreboard as an honest-to-goodness endorsement of the winners’ political platform.

We can only hope these braying donkeys find themselves following the path of so many recent examples from the sporting world, in which pride preceded embarrassing falls.

Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver and would-be handicapper JuJu Smith-Schuster said before a playoff game that the “(Cleveland) Browns is the Browns.” Gertrude Stein – “a rose is a rose is a rose” – would have been proud of JuJu’s message, that the Browns, despite their impressive season record, were still a hapless franchise.

After pummeling the Steelers in their first-round playoff matchup, Browns players thanked JuJu for lighting their emotional fire.

A similar story line unfolded in the Baltimore-Tennessee playoff game. Tennessee Titans players had danced on the Ravens logo following a previous success. The Ravens won their first-round playoff rematch and made it a point to seek out the Titans logo for use as a dance floor.

Monday night, the other side of the coin was on display as Alabama routed Ohio State in the college football national championship game. Alabama wide receiver DeVonta Smith, the winner of this season’s Heisman Trophy, was dominant and the announcers noted that for all his success he was and is a model of humility.

No trash talking from Smith, just consistent production and success.

What does this have to do with Democrats and their gloating allies? Maybe nothing. Maybe a lot.

Those who study long-term trends realize that over decades the ins eventually become the outs.

The pendulum of society’s mood spends precious little time in the middle and more often finds itself on either the left or right side.

This dictates that when the pendulum is at its extremes, it just means it is that much closer to reversing.

Purveyors of doom and gloom are surveying events and predicting the end of our republic as we know it. They are right for the moment, but not necessarily forever.

The incoming Harris-Biden administration could find itself staring down economic collapse despite their full-out stimulus efforts.

A vacuous left-wing guest columnist in the local rag today spouted that leadership is not about making excuses; all this as an attack on Trump.

Yet excuses already are being made about what a tough situation Biden has inherited. Rest assured, any and all problems going forward will be blamed on Trump.

That would be excuses made by Biden and the gang. But his excuses will be righteous.

Still, I don’t recall Biden running on this platform: Vote for me. I can’t do anything to change the course of history, but my kid needs a new job.

The motley crew that is the democratic electorate has many fringe elements who now are awaiting their quid pro quo – metaphorical payoffs for their support. If they don’t get all they expect, and maybe a bit more, be prepared to see them back on the street expressing their outrage.

Their protests will, as has been past practice, be accepted as legitimate exercise of first amendment rights. Of course that does not apply to right-wing protesters.

That Capitol protest of last week could have exposed a potential Achilles’ heel of the left crackdown corps, the presence of sympathizers to the cause of liberty who are within the ranks of the police and/or military.

The far right also can be said to have plenty of ex-police and ex-military in its ranks. These are people trained to excel in the sort of armed conflict that could be our future.

Even if we somehow avoid violent conflict in the streets, it is less likely Biden will get through four years without his regime needing to deal with economic meltdown.

Aside from the fear of losing your job and assets in such a scenario, there could be other ramifications that should cause concern.

Socialist icon Franklin Delano Roosevelt is widely credited with steering the United States out of the Great Depression with his assorted handouts and make-work projects.

But check your history. What really got the U.S. out of depression was World War II and its aftermath. The U.S. was geared up economically to help the rest of the world win the war, then continued to boom afterward rebuilding war-ravaged countries.

Other than the Pearl Harbor attack in what was then the U.S. territory of Hawaii, our homeland was spared direct war devastation. Don’t count on being similarly isolated in a potential World War III.

That, too, would of course be Trump’s fault.

Financial markets and economic indicators can be rigged, just like presidential elections.

The critical difference is election fraudsters only need to get away with their act every four years. Market manipulators, on the other hand, need to keep their chicanery hidden from the public day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year.

And it gets tougher and tougher and tougher to keep the mirage intact.

Eventually, markets demand reality and neither courts nor elected officials are going to be able to stonewall that truth indefinitely.

This is not a partisan rant. Republicans and Democrats alike have been complicit in throwing money at all our problems, keeping markets awash with liquidity and hoping against hope that an eventual solution can be found.

There is no solution. And so this ongoing delusion falls under the metaphorical category of kicking the can down the road.

In the process of can kicking, the powers that be have dug the U.S. into the fiscal abyss, the monetary point of no return.

For all those petty dictators who invoke science to justify their lockdowns and crackdowns, let them now admit to the daunting, inarguable mathematics of the moment.

An early December 2020 report by RBC Wealth Management, citing International Monetary Fund data, put U.S. debt at slightly more than $27 trillion, about 127 percent of gross domestic product.

Add in another trillion in stimulus payments being sent out now and you are at $28 trillion, with Democrats waiting to add trillions upon trillions to that debt total once they take over at the federal level in little more than a week.

For perspective, there has been $10 trillion of total federal government debt added in four years of a Trump administration. Before him, Obama oversaw an increase from $10 trillion total to $20 trillion total in his eight years in office.

Note that the radical Green New Deal, which the socialist arm of the Democratic party has been promised, has been estimated to cost as much as $93 trillion over 10 years.

This estimate is panned as being way too high by leftist advocates of the environmental boondoggle. But even optimists anticipate spending $18 trillion over the next 50 years, which would be slightly less than equaling our entire national debt that had been accumulated in 200-plus years through the end of the Obama administration.

That is $18 trillion in Green New Deal debt without factoring in any other deficit spending for giveaways like Medicare for all, student loan forgiveness, increased stimulus, universal basic income, and all the other promised socialist handouts.

It also doesn’t include deficit spending for things you’d expect from a federal government, such as the military, law enforcement, Social Security, original Medicare for the aged, Medicaid for the poor, etc., etc., etc.

Economists, at least the traditional ones, understand that once nations reach this level of indebtedness above and beyond the national’s total annual output, it is an inescapable situation.

There are no solutions, at least not any that the nation’s inhabitants would find palatable.

Huge tax increases and huge reductions in spending would be needed to address the problems.

Governments around the world, and in the United States in particular, have to keep expanding monetary bases and using their fire hoses of liquidity to keep markets moving and the masses placated.

You think you saw problems this past summer with unhappy social justice warriors taking to the streets? Well, imagine what it would look like if the entire populace, now addicted to periodic government handouts under the catchall term of “stimulus,” suddenly found those handouts stopped due to lack of government credit.

It doesn’t matter that we have a walking cadaver in Joe Biden about to occupy the Oval Office. The greatest financial minds in history could not avert what is coming and that is a worldwide financial crisis.

It is incredible that the whole mess has been kept from imploding to this point. But it is coming.

Look for price inflation to heat up and with that process, the federal government left with no possible remedy other than to keep putting gasoline on the flame in the form of increased borrowing to inflate further the money supply.

Eventually, there is a crash and no amount of fresh money supply will stop it.

This partly explains the surge in Bitcoin, as investors and speculators look for something that won’t be rendered virtually worthless in a hyper-inflationary currency collapse.

More traditional safe havens, ones that unlike Bitcoin are usable even if the power grid and or internet collapse, are gold and silver,

Precious metals have been valued for thousands of years. They will continue to fulfill their role of money of last resort.

Do not be fooled by Central Banks, and others who badmouth gold while holding vast reserves of it. Do not be fooled by investment types, who would rather have you churning your stock portfolio than see you hunkered down with bullion in a home safe or third-party vault.

No one can put an exact date on a collapse. Still, preparing as soon as possible for the potential for one to happen in the near future would seem to be the way to go.

There likely will come a time, perhaps not too far off, when the gold and silver lifeboats will be unavailable. If you doubt that possibility, recall looking for toilet paper early last year, or try going shopping for a gun or ammunition today.

Demand can outstrip supply without warning.

I’m not an investment advisor and I don’t sell gold or silver. Whatever you do, you do by your own choice, taking all the attendant risks.

If you think our roiling society will be stable in the long run, that our economy will boom at historic rates to make the debt burden less onerous, then continue as you are.

Celebrate the Biden win, the Blue Wave, and get giddy with thoughts of persecuting Trump supporters.

The irony will be that many who are preparing for the unpleasant financial future likely will fall into that category of Trump voters, potentially giving them the last laugh after all.

It seems fitting to begin today in a fairy tale mode and so: Once upon a time the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) was the spokesman for the little people being oppressed by government.

Yes, the organization came into being in the wake of World War I to protect the rights of radicals (mostly socialists) who were being targeted by our federal government, which was not keen on repeating the Russian Revolution here. Ostensibly the ACLU would look out for others, too.

But the ACLU always has tended to the political left, never meeting a fringe cause it was not willing to champion as long as it was ideologically in the Stalin-Mao-Marx range of the spectrum.

Just to spice things up, and keep up the illusion of fairness, the group occasionally comes down on the side of some person or group on the political right. Think of these as exceptions that prove the rule.

That seemed to have happened last Friday when an ACLU spokesman warned that suspending President Trump’s social media access illustrated “unchecked power” by the big tech firms who increasingly are the un-elected rulers of this nation.

On that much, the ACLU was correct.

It’s not that the ACLU hierarchy gives a rat’s patoot about Trump’s rights, as they continue to confirm by calling for his immediate impeachment on their web site even as I type this. But, if one read on in the statement, Trump was used as the stalking horse because the real ACLU fear was such suspension would be applied to people on the far left – perhaps Antifa or Black Lives Matter.

I know, I know, that’s about as likely as Nancy Pelosi going a week without an injection of Botox or overpriced designer ice cream.

But the ACLU is collectively smart enough to realize the prevailing sentiment. If ugly mobs show up at the doors of the likes of Dorsey or Zuckerberg, they might alter their draconian policies at Twitter and Facebook, respectively.

If in the future, the political mood in the country swings from left back to the conservative right, it’s not impossible that these guys, or their successors, would bend their biases the other way in a pragmatic concession to making further billions and controlling public discourse.

It’s all reminiscent of the confessional poem of a former Lutheran pastor in Germany, lamenting that he and others had done nothing to stop the rise of Nazism. The poem recounts failing to say something when they came for socialists, trade unionists, Jews, because the writer was none of those.

It ends with this lament: “Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak for me.”

Rational adults, whether they support Trump or not, ought to be horrified at what is taking place in this country.

The one-sided nature of actions is numbingly obvious.

Social media limits voices with which those in charge of the outlets do not agree. Trump is shut down, but as noted in a zerohedge.com article by Jonathan Turley (Constitutional law professor and DEMOCRAT!) Rep. Maxine Waters is free to urge people to confront Republicans in restaurants, Rep. Ayanna Pressley faces no censorship for saying during leftist protests “there needs to be more unrest in the streets” or incoming VP (AKA president in waiting) Kamala Harris said while a Senator “protestors should not let up.”

Harris was even busy trying to raise bail to get violent left-wing protesters back on the streets to repeat their actions.

Social media also acts in concert when silenced voices seek upstart outlets to express themselves, witness the shutdown of Parler.

Power-drunk Democrats want to overturn the Constitution to exact political revenge by trying yet again to impeach President Trump, even though it would seem impossible to get a confirmation of that in the Senate before his term expires and private citizens cannot be impeached.

If you are counting on our court system to stem this tide toward mob rule, think again. I’m sure the judges at all levels will come down hard – correctly – on the people who breached the Capitol, even as they incorrectly allow left-wing types to get away with autonomous zones being put up in major cities.

The purveyors of such autonomous zones would have greater difficulty getting away with that in rural precincts, where law enforcement would be more likely to act and even if it didn’t, vigilantes likely would.

The latest Portland, Oregon, example ended up with the protesters and lawbreakers getting an apology from the city’s weak-kneed mayor and a promise to honor the demands of the protesters.

Had there been charges filed, the ACLU would have rushed to defend, while remaining silent and, by inference, tone deaf, to the real threat to this country’s freedoms.

Your media masters have spoken, telling us that we should be shocked, saddened, sickened and otherwise dismayed by what transpired today in Washington, D.C. I am none of the above.

My take is you’d better get used to it because millions of conservative and libertarian people in this country feel wronged, and frustrated that no one in a position of authority seems willing to address their concerns.

Rest assured, these unhappy souls aren’t going away quietly; not when the stakes – our country’s future – are this huge.

I don’t watch CNN, but I’m sure their footage of the events today had “mostly peaceful protests” running beneath it, as was their stock description of Antifa or Black Lives Matter riot video showing notable property damage.

What? They didn’t try to justify the events in Washington today? They were hypercritical?

Color me shocked.

A local news hack in my small town described it as a “day which will live in American infamy,” fittingly cadging the words used by American socialist icon, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in describing the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.

This media bias and inconsistency speaks to one reason for the frustration among the masses.

Those on the political right have spent the past four years seeing their duly elected president harassed by the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives and the supposedly nonpartisan FBI.

They have witnessed the media eager to run with discredited stories of Russian influence on Trump and Russian interference in the outcome of the election that put him in the Oval Office. That same media got into bed with Joe Biden early and suppressed any stories that would have harmed the candidacy of the walking cadaver.

The aggrieved of the political right have seen big business and big tech align to put their thumb on the electoral scales.

They’ve seen sham election recounts that didn’t address the matter of ballot legality. They’ve seen courts duck cases or throw them out entirely, based on Catch-22 rulings regarding standing or timing.

They’ve seen video of questionable election conduct, affidavits detailing misdeeds, and technical explanations of why what happened was virtually statistically impossible, all ignored summarily. Nothing to see here. Keep moving.

They’ve seen four years of screeching Democratic lawmakers and their operatives taking every opportunity to blast Trump and his supporters, while praising the people burning down and/or looting businesses, purportedly in pursuit of justice.

We’ve seem images from today of an interloper in Queen Nancy Pelosi’s office (sure hope he didn’t eat any of her overpriced ice cream, which could push things into the grand theft territory). We’ve seen windows broken at the U.S. Capitol.

Tear gas was used. Shots were fired, reportedly with one death, a woman who succumbed to gunshot wounds.

I wonder if the Pink Pussy Hat brigade, whose headgear supposedly is a “symbol of support and solidarity for women’s rights and political resistance,” will come out in droves to protest the death of a woman, who was killed likely while resisting a political outcome.

Don’t hold your breath. It’s the same way women’s organizations typically hold their fire when men accused of sexual misconduct are on the political left.

The events of this day and night will, of course, be portrayed as being the fault of Trump and any others who have refused to accept silently the results of the tainted election.

Don’t buy that explanation. This is the fault of the news media, big tech, and two-faced politicians who preach reconciliation but can’t wait for their next chance to denigrate the opposition.

Don’t forget Obama’s labeling of his opponents as bitter people clinging to guns and religion.

Don’t forget Hillary Clinton’s blanket condemnation of Trump supporters as deplorables.

Remember all the faceless bureaucrats deciding to resist Trump from their taxpayer-paid jobs in the government, and being lionized by other public officials.

In coming days we should learn whether these were, indeed, Trump supporters doing the property damage today, or rather whether they were false-flag actors from the likes of Antifa planted as part of disinformation campaigns.

Whichever way the facts fall this time, it likely was merely the first battle in what figures to be a long-running war. There will be Trump supporters and other marginalized people willing to act out in violent ways in coming days, weeks, months and years.

It long has been my belief that if the left pushed hard enough, they would motivate the more unstable elements in the far right and might find themselves biting off more than they could chew.

The combination of biased media coverage and blatant failure of states and their election officials to follow laws regarding election procedures, seasoned with some in-your-face gloating by the likes of Senator Chuck Schumer, have made for an offensive mix.

Coverage of this D.C. protest is more fodder for those feeling disaffected by the way this country is being manipulated.

Autonomous zones are tolerated, as long as they are instituted by the leftist anarchists. Centrist bar owners in New York City are arrested when they declare an anonymous zone.

Similarly, riots, violence, personal injury and property destruction are characterized as fair means of expression as long as they advance leftist agendas.

I await with mock interest calls to defund the D.C. police for putting down this so-called Trump demonstration.

Can the maskholes be far behind with their citations for protesters who were caught without COVID-19 protection?

Hopeful conservatives are anticipating a huge couple of days upcoming in this first full week of January 2021, with Georgia runoff elections Tuesday and the Electoral College vote count Wednesday.

I’m expecting a combination of Comet Kohoutek and Y2K.

As a short refresher, in late 1973 and early 1974, Comet Kohoutek was supposed to be the “Comet of the Century” in terms of brightness. The more hyperbolic enthused that it would be another Venus in the night sky or even a rival to a full moon.

In reality, it was a dingy smudge of light that one could observe only if that person knew exactly where to look in the night sky, preferably with a pair of binoculars.

And then there was Y2K. Digital Armageddon was predicted because early computer programmers, looking to conserve what was then scarce memory capacity, had denoted years by using only the last two numbers.

When 2000 arrived, it was feared, the computers would not be able to tell if it was 2000 or 1900.

Those who panicked in advance of midnight Dec. 31, 1999, found themselves with multi-year supplies of toilet paper and freeze-dried food, not to mention egg on their collective faces.

Fast forward to 2021, when long-suffering Republicans, and Trump supporters of all stripes, are hoping at last to find their election grievances being addressed.

Let us begin with the Senate runoff elections in Georgia, where the Democrats could forge a tie in the Senate should they win both. Said tie presumably would be broken on votes of significance by incoming VP Kamala Harris, despite the fact that witless Joe Biden recently referred to her as the “president-elect.”

Whether it was more raging dementia or just a Freudian slip by Sleepy Joe, the fact remains that in a split Senate, Harris would wield president-like power.

That those who would oppose the U.S. going socialist harbor any belief Georgia will delay that by going Republican in these runoffs is the triumph of hope over experience.

The polls close at 7 this evening in Georgia. By 7:01 the elections should be called for both Democrat candidates. Afterward, reports will leak out of Republican poll watchers being segregated in Tallahassee, Florida, while Democratic poll watchers were greeted with reams of blank ballots, to be filled in for the candidates of their choice.

Videos also will emerge of suitcases full of ballots being pulled from under tables and run through scanners on Dec. 25, while the faithful were celebrating Christmas.

This all will be ignored by Lamestream Media outlets. Anyone attempting to post about these questionable election activities on social media will be censored by complete removal, or merely having disparaging remarks included with their submissions so as to question the veracity of the information.

A day later than the Georgia sham, Electoral College votes are to be counted. Here is the last hope of the crowd who believe Trump was the victim of Grand Theft Election in November.

They are pinning their hopes on challenges from members of the Senate and House of Representatives.

They think Vice President Mike Pence might exercise his authority to hold off certifying the votes and instead order a full-scale audit of questionable states such as Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Nevada.

The left-wing propagandists, who pass themselves off as journalists, have been hyperventilating about such things being a threat to our democracy, even though they are provided for in The Constitution.

These same hypocrites cannot specify how widespread election fraud is not such a threat to democracy. Perhaps you recall how the denials of election misconduct have been walked back from the original absolute claim that there was no fraud, to there was no widespread fraud, to there wasn’t sufficient fraud to change the outcome.

How any of that can be determined without extensive and nonpartisan examination remains unclear.

What is perfectly clear is the bulk of the country, if polls are to be believed, doesn’t think this election was absolutely on the up and up. Even some of the alleged winners can’t deny evidence of chicanery.

But such widespread belief has been whitewashed and pushed to the periphery, mostly by the very same alleged journalists and D.C. swamp creatures who spent Trump’s first term as president trying to run a behind-the-scenes coup on him.

Our courts have been found wanting, too, in this moment of national crisis, due to their procedural buck-passing.

Their actions, or lack thereof, did not, of course, threaten democracy.

A state that ran a questionable presidential election delivering more of the same in a critical pair of subsequent Senate runoff elections doesn’t threaten democracy, either, right?

Louie Gohmert, U.S. House member from Texas, seemed to be taking a cue from this blog when he said a few days back that the only hope for the political right is to go as violent, maybe moreso, as the political left – read Black Lives Matter and Antifa.

Gohmert backed off his comments a day later. Too bad, because he had it right the first time.