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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.

Sports has devolved to a ridiculous state in this COVID-19 era, but the virus is merely the catalyst that accelerated a process toward the absurd that already was well in motion.

As I write this, the Armed Forces Bowl is being played, with Tulsa, a 6-2 team ranked 24^th nationally, meeting 3-7 Mississippi State.

Mississippi State took an early lead, and should the Bulldogs win, some will trumpet that as proof the team deserved to play in a bowl. They are wrong; just as wrong as any fools who would insist that the putrid New York Jets should make the NFL playoffs based on winning their past two games, upsetting the LA Rams and Cleveland Browns.

I recall a time when college bowl games were reserved for successful teams – make that very successful teams. As the number of bowl games has increased through the years, the standards have been lowered. Here is an example of the virus merely magnifying a trend already in progress.

Can an 0-11 bowl team be in our future? Don’t bet against it.

Think of this watered-down bowl situation as college football’s equivalent of a participation trophy.

There is a downside to this feel-good exercise. Where once making a bowl game was an accomplishment for the players and the teams, now it is no more than an extra away game, often in places that aren’t exactly tourist meccas.

On the other end of the spectrum, the college football championship semifinals are to be played on New Year’s Day. But even though the records of the teams are impressive, there have been accommodations made here, too.

Look at Ohio State and its 6-0 record. First, a special dispensation had to be made to get Ohio State into its Big Ten title game due to a lack of games played by the Buckeyes, a bow to COVID-19.

Having gotten into that conference championship game, and rallying to beat Northwestern, the Buckeyes were unbeaten but largely untested.

Other teams, most notably one-loss Texas A&M (8-1), argued publicly for inclusion in the four-team playoff field. This was not necessarily at the expense of Ohio State, but at least a call for a closer look at a one-loss Notre Dame team whose marquee win was over Clemson, in overtime, against a Clemson team playing without its starting quarterback.

In the rematch, Clemson had Trevor Lawrence back to play quarterback and rolled Notre Dame off the field to the tune of a 34-10 final.

Yet Notre Dame is in the hunt for the national title and Texas A&M is not.

The four-team college football playoff field continues to be a joke that runs contrary to the inclusion philosophy that permeates so much of society and sports. Make it eight teams and there almost never could be teams with legitimate cases left on the outside.

Back to bowl games, there was a Cotton Bowl played Dec. 30 in which Florida was fielding a team mostly of backups as numerous top-tier players either were sidelined by the virus, or merely decided not to play, the “opt-out” option, in order to save themselves from possible injury and harm to their professional prospects.

Predictably, Oklahoma destroyed Florida by a 55-20 score. This could not have been very satisfying, for winner or loser. I pity the fools who actually watched this garbage on television.

The NFL is not immune to the absurdity. Virus-depleted rosters produce joke games that have serious impact on postseason plans.

Pro football already is a model of socialism, where strong teams from one season are “rewarded” with tougher schedules the next season. Already the allocation of talent is on a reverse-merit system, with the losers given drafting priority over the successful.

Making things even more difficult to stomach is the social justice warrior ethic that has invaded all levels of sports – although the NBA has backed off its blatant Black Lives Matter labeling since TV ratings tanked last season, likely as blowback from the populace.

Curious times produce curious results. I have yet to watch more than a few plays of any NFL game this season.

If we resume our annual Super Bowl parties, I might find myself hanging with those who ignore the game, but eagerly consume the commercials.

We have become a nation of euphemism dispensers, as reality increasingly is sugarcoated to make it go down more easily.

Garbage men are sanitation engineers. Handicapped people are differently enabled. Participation trophies have replaced awards for the winners.

Even in supposed meritocracies such as professional sports, there are euphemisms bandied about.

I spent a lot of time covering pro football, specifically the Pittsburgh Steelers, and every summer many a player was cut from the roster and sent packing from preseason training camp with the soothing words of “it was just the numbers game” ringing in their ears.

This was supposed to ease the blow to their pride, with the implication being that they had talent, but if only the players had been at a different position, where the number of proven players was not as great, they might have made the roster.

Reality, implied but left unsaid, was that if they’d have been good enough, they’d have displaced those proven players and there would have been different victims of the numbers game.

I’m not sure, but now maybe these roster cuts get participation trophies as parting gifts

As an aside, the member of the staff charged with notifying players who were about to be cut, to come see the coach and bring their playbook, generally was, and is, labeled “The Turk.”

This is a title which surprisingly has endured in this era of racism sensitivity, be the racism real, perceived or imagined.

In a bit of irony, Steelers offensive tackle Tunch Ilkin, an actual Turk who was born in Istanbul in 1957, never got a visit from the metaphorical Turk, playing for the Steelers and Green Bay Packers before retiring of his own volition in 1993.

The numbers game – non-football variety – is prevalent as 2020 dodders toward 2021.

Begin with insipid utterances of so many that 2021 has to be better than 2020, and not just because it is one digit higher.

These optimists without portfolio forget that the calendar is an artificial construction, not recognized by forces of distress.

A Harris-Biden administration could make 2020 look like the good, old days, should they be able to accomplish remaking our country into a dystopian nightmare.

While working 20 years at the Johnstown newspaper, such misplaced optimism broke out any time the chain ownership, which had come on board relatively late in my run there, played musical chairs with the editors.

The new people surely would be better than what we had, the underlings mused. They never were.

This sort of misplaced optimism was summed up neatly by an executive for Bethlehem Steel, then the major employer in Johnstown, who succinctly told the populace to expect the worst and it never would be disappointed.

Not that many years later, Bethlehem Steel was bankrupt and gone from Johnstown.

We got a curious numbers game release today when Gallup announced President Trump had topped its annual Most Admired Man poll garnering 18 percent. Joe Biden, the man who ostensibly had beaten Trump in the recent election, came in at a lusty 6 percent.

Biden even trailed significantly runner-up Barack Obama (15 percent) and had a modest edge over Dr. Tony Fauci (3 percent) who is the relatively unpopular face of lockdown America.

Experts in statistics and probability have studied the November election and concluded that it is improbable – more like virtually impossible — that Biden won the election in view of the way the voting totals could be broken down against previous benchmarks.

But Biden appears to have beaten the Turk and won the numbers game.

Another numbers game is the ongoing stimulus debate.

There had been numerous studies, even before COVID-19 and the economic shutdowns, that the average American household was running on fumes financially

One study that was reported in Forbes magazine on Jan. 6, 2016, said 63 percent of those households didn’t have $500 in savings to meet an unexpected expense.

Presumably many of those are the same people who in late 2020 are decrying that a $600 stimulus check per person isn’t nearly enough for them.

Even given inflationary adjustments, $600 now is more than $500 in 2016. And that is not $600 per household, but rather $600 per household member, making a total of $2,400 for the typical four-person grouping.

For these people, even the proposed $2,000 a head/$8,000 per family, would not be enough. But that is more a reflection of their poor spending habits than anything else.

Do not forget, the government early in 2020 had handed out $1,200 stimulus checks per adult and $600 per child.

Remember, too, that those who have lost their jobs have for some time enjoyed extended and enhanced unemployment benefits on top of any stimulus payments doled out by the federal government.

For some people, this meant that they made more when not working. Stories appeared in the media of workers being upset over callbacks to their jobs.

These increased unemployment benefits are likely to be continued in one form or another in coming days or weeks, just as additional stimulus payments are coming, of one size or another.

The resulting parabolic increase in the United States national debt is the ignored, but still relevant, consequence of the handouts

It is our national numbers game. The Turk eventually will come calling.

Listen closely and you can almost hear some of the variations of Christmas standards being sung in the homes of our elite overlords and those who oppose them.

Jingle Bells (as sung in Dr. Tony Fauci’s house)

Wear your mask, wear your mask, everywhere you go.

In your home or at the store, it’s the way to go, hey.

Take your shot, take your shot, we demand that, too.

If you don’t we’ll shame you good and keep you in our zoo.

Yes we don’t obey, the orders that we give.

But you still must heed our thoughts, or we won’t let you live.

We know much more than you, a thought we gladly share.

So do as told, just shut your mouth and we’ll pretend to care, hey.

White Christmas (as sung in Joe and Dr. Jill Biden’s bunker)

I’m dreaming of a clear moment,

Just like the one’s I used to have.

When my kids all listened; my ideas glistened

Plus, we raked in lots of dough.

Deck The Halls (as sung in the homes of Democrat Party vote manipulators)

Juice the count with mail-in ballots.

Count ’em all, count ’em all, every one.

We will win if we just do this.

And the courts won’t spoil our fun.

Oh Christmas Tree (as sung in front of Nancy Pelosi’s $25,000 refrigerator)

More stimulus, more stimulus, we must appease the masses.

If we don’t, they will be mad and come and kick our (butts).

We took their jobs and now they’re poor.

So just to help, we’ll give them more.

More stimulus, more stimulus, we’ll give them back their money.

Good King Wenceslas (as sung in the White House)

Donald Trump he did his best, trying to save the country.

But the deep state cracked him up, just like Humpty Dumpty.

Now The Donald may not go, citing ballot cheating.

If he stays his job will last; his impact not be fleeting.

Christmas Gifts For The Greats, Near-Greats And Ingrates

Sam-ta Claus has a tradition of cobbling up a list of gift suggestions for the rich and famous who are too busy — these days trying to ruin the world – to do holiday shopping for themselves.

Merry Christmas to them and here’s what they should find under their trees.

Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden: Matching 55-gallon drums of Botox so they don’t need to share. Yes, both will continue to look like walking cadavers in 2021, but at least their skin will have that artificial stretched look, sort of like the working surface of a snare drum.

William Barr and John Durham: A copy of Abbott and Costello’s Who’s On First? script. These bumblers make the Abbott and Costello duo doing their famous routine look like a pair of geniuses by comparison.

President Trump: He can self-gift all-inclusive pardons to himself and his family members because if the Deep State was able to gin up false charges and harass him when he operated from the Oval Office, imagine what they will do when he is out of power.

Eric Swalwell: A blowup Asian sex doll so he won’t need to keep company with and/or employ Chinese spies.

Kamala Harris: Two gifts for our would-be Number Two in the executive branch. First, she gets her very own Joe Biden voodoo doll, the better to speed up her ascent to the top, as her handlers have planned. Also, Harris needs a DVD of the movie “The Manchurian Candidate” as background

Governor Tom Wolf: A scale model of Pennsylvania so he can take out all his lockdown anger on the toy state and leave the real thing alone and hopefully avoid the economic collapse he seems determined to guarantee.

Dr. Tony Fauci: Someone to take notes for him and remind him when he’s pulling a 180-degree turn in his public comments.

John Bolton: An industrial-sized mustache comb and a world-domination video game so he can stop trying to instigate more world-wide conflict.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC): A primer on the difference between working behind a bar, as she did before landing in the U.S. House of Representatives, and being admitted to the legal bar, which so many of her Congressional colleagues have been.

Hunter Biden: Gainful employment that he at last can get and keep on his own, not due to daddy’s influence. Keep practicing these few words, Hunter: “Do you want fries with that?”

John Roberts: Our Supreme Court Chief Justice needs a two-liter bottle of spit, the better always to be ready to wet his finger and determine the way the political winds are blowing before he makes a decision on his next major case, or just ignores it completely.

Bill Gates: A furry white cat to sit on his lap and be stroked as Mr. Microsoft plans his world domination in the best James Bond villain tradition.

Elon Musk: The lead role in the next movie about the life and times of P.T. Barnum, he of the oft-cited quote “There’s a sucker born every minute.” Musk presides over Tesla, ostensibly a car company worth more than any other, including Toyota, despite earning its profit based on selling carbon credits, not automobiles.

Dr. Jill Biden: A compilation of quotes from the Dr. Leonard McCoy character in the old “Star Trek” series, who was known for saying often, with feeling, “I’m a doctor, not a (fill in the blank). Now, old Doc McCoy was supposed to be an actual physician, an MD, not a Dr. of education, as Dr. Biden is. But Jill seems a bit touchy when her title is not used, so if anyone forgets she’s a doctor, she can crack open the McCoy quote book and let them have it.

Mark Zuckerberg: A like, a follow and a friend request from Bill Gates’ white cat.

There was a time in journalism, way back when accuracy took precedence over agendas, that veterans would school the cub reporters with this bromide: If a woman calls and says she’s your mother, check it out.

Don’t presume. Don’t assume. Don’t trust single sources.

How trite this all seems as 2020 comes to a close and much of the news media has eagerly transformed into propaganda organs. If a single, anonymous source, supports the agenda, run with it. If a competently sourced story doesn’t suit the agenda, refuse to report it or, if that can’t be done, suppress it.

I had a head start on learning this type of now passe practice of digging for answers because the old man tended to answer requests for information with the general reply “Look it up yourself.”

Maybe he didn’t know the answer. Maybe he did. Either way, he thought it was better for me to learn to gather information myself. He was right.

All these years later, even after I’ve stopped doing this sort of thing for pay, the habit persists,

This is the roundabout way of getting into today’s inquiry: Why do so many charities set their requests at $19 a month?

Just the other night a cute kid on a television ad told me that donating $19 a month would show I cared.

So, $18 a month doesn’t cut it? How about $18.99 a month?

I wanted to know why $19 was magic, so I did some research.

Back in the day, I’d have needed to run to the family encyclopedias, or even to the library, to get my answer. These days it’s as easy as logging on to the internet, calling up a search engine and asking why so many charities request $19 a month?

Duckduckgo,com, my new favorite go-to for untracked search, didn’t pull an old man and tell me to look it up myself. Instead, it gave me many answers.

It’s not so much that $19 a month shows I care, but rather that most of us don’t care so much about parting with $19 a month. We would, however, think twice or more at $20 a month, no matter how worthy the cause.

People who set prices long ago learned the power of the nine. Gasoline prices end in 9/10ths. Car prices tend to be $29,999.99. Not $30,000, just $29,000 plus 999.99.

For similar reasons, many charities, and businesses, like to break down the cost per day. For example, that $19 a month can be stated in the minuscule amount of just 63 cents a day. Suddenly it all sounds so much less expensive than even $19 a month, or $228 a annually, which is $19 a month times 12, as in the number of months in year.

One source added that for book-keeping purposes and tax returns, the Feds require the charity provide written acknowledgment of gifts of more than $250 a year. The $19-a-month figures keep the total under the need for such paperwork.

This is not to say these charities, whether they are for ailing kids, wounded soldiers or suffering animals, don’t deserve the $19 a month or much more.

It just speaks to the way subtle psychological manipulation has infiltrated all corners of our society, whether it is used for purposes noble or nefarious.

As time passes, individuals are going to have a greater need to take it upon themselves to think critically about the messages they have conveyed to them by media, big tech and the government.

Sometimes you are being played like a fiddle. Don’t hand them the bow.

More and more it is becoming evident that we’re neck-deep in a battle of us vs. them.

It’s not really political right vs. political left, conservatives vs. liberals, capitalists vs. socialists, mask Nazis vs. mask haters, or even race vs. race.

Those are merely the skirmishes that stem from the root battle, which is elites vs. the rest of us.

It helps the cause of the elites who would control every aspect of your life that they can pit group vs. group.

Divide and conquer, it’s the oldest playbook for those who would rule the world. The elites love to see the infighting that advances their cause and allows them still to be able to profess their innocence

Sometimes the elites drop their collective guard and come right out with their disdain for the masses.

Witness Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” comment, or Barack Obama’s crack about his opponents being bitter people clinging to guns and religion. Obama’s remark is particularly illuminating because he was demeaning those who would exercise rights guaranteed them in the U.S. Constitution.

Our Constitution, and any similar guarantee of individual rights around the world, are the enemy of the elites. These rights prevent elites from completely subjugating those whom they deem inferior.

But the elites have been chipping away at the edges of our protections for some time and now, emboldened by COVID-19, they have put on a full-court press to render them null and void.

The evidence is all around you, if you care to look.

Consider the hypocrisy spouted daily by elites and crammed down our throats by media and big tech. That would be the same media and big tech that carefully suppress any messages running contrary to the mantra of blind obedience to power.

Just this week it was revealed – by a family whistleblower ironically – that Dr. Deborah Birx, a prominent member of the government’s Coronavirus Task Force, had preached limiting travel and Thanksgiving get-togethers only to travel and host a huge holiday gathering for her extended family.

Were this an isolated example, it would not be such a big deal. But it is a pattern of behavior by Birx and her ilk. The elites preach restraint and restriction, then flaunt that the rules don’t apply to them.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi needed a beauty shop opened to touch her up cosmetically, as did Chicago Lori Lightfoot, both actions having been taken while the “little people” were told to stay home and such establishments were closed for those of the lesser classes.

California Governor Gavin Newsom closed restaurants then attended a party at a restaurant. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo advised against holiday celebrations then planned one of his own, just as his little brother used his media soapbox to maintain his adherence to quarantining, which was called into question.

Also today, amidst generally good COVID-19 developments in terms of vaccines being issued and a financial stimulus package on the way, a report came from the United Kingdom of a new strain of virus that supposedly is 70 percent more contagious.

Predictably, there have been knee-jerk over-reactions such as travel bans, lockdowns and business closings.

But some are questioning this latest development. Carl Heneghan, professor of evidence based medicine at Oxford University, is a skeptic,

“I’ve been doing this job for 25 years and I can tell you, you can’t establish a quantifiable number in such a short time frame.”

Translation: The elites needed bad news and some was conjured up on cue to keep virus concerns front-and-center. But that wasn’t enough. It had to be even worse that what we already have had on the plate,

And people like Heneghan will have their skeptical sentiments banned outright from dissemination, flagged as unproven, or ridiculed by the usual media suspects.

But the 70-percent-worse claim will be trumpeted far and wide.

Such over-reaches should be all the evidence rational people need to decide they are being manipulated and demeaned.

The elites would seem to have made similar mistakes by the degree to which they went overboard in trying to guarantee a populist politician such as President Trump did not get a second term in office.

The fact that elites can act in such obvious ways and not be called on it by the masses, instead of by just a select few contrary voices, indicates the war already has likely been lost.

Spoiler alert: The elites have won.