Category Archives: Uncategorized

If you are bored today, tune into coverage of Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s congressional testimony and keep track of how many times Powell mentions inflation.

Make it a drinking game just to keep your attention, downing one every time the I-word is used.

Powell and his ilk are walking a tightrope on the matter. He and his predecessors have shoved a torrent of liquidity into our nation’s money supply, but haven’t gotten the desired results because too many of you are keeping your spigot of personal spending set on trickle.

No doubt this in part owes to job insecurity, with so many currently — or about to be — unemployed due to heavy-handed intervention in the name of virus policy that has gutted private business.

Also, when reported inflation rates are relatively low, there is no urgency felt by consumers to spend now lest they be paying more tomorrow for what they could have bought today. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics put the 12-month consumer price inflation rate at 1.4 percent for the past 12 months in its most recent report.

This doesn’t mean this is an accurate reflection of price inflation. If you have bought just about anything in recent weeks and months, you know costs are rising.

But the government’s method of tracking inflation, detailed previously in this space, allows the numbers to be fudged by substituting items in the basket (such as using chicken when beef prices rise) and hedonic adjustments, a sort of statistical voodoo in which inflation is artificially reduced by theoretical gains in productivity.

How does it benefit the government to under-report inflation? Let us count the ways.

It reduces cost of living adjustments paid to the burgeoning ranks of those on Social Security.

It keeps interest rates on the ever-expanding national debt lower than they might otherwise be and so reduces borrowing costs.

It puts a lid on employees being able to cite the inflation rate to demand wage increases from the companies whose ownership and management fund too many of our politicians. Those politicians are aware of how they can curry favor with executives who love to keep wages low, at least for the working class, by keeping reported inflation understated.

How fiddling with the models to keep inflation artificially low hurts is that it keeps Powell and his friends from meeting their target of 2-plus percent for an annual number, and encouraging you to spend all the money they have created.

But you never hear high-ranking government officials questioning the validity of the reported inflation rates.

Contrast that with Powell, and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen (who used to have Powell’s job) both going public within the past week doubting the accuracy of the official unemployment number, put at 6.3 percent by the government’s torturers of statistics.

Powell and Yellen say 10 percent is closer to the truth. Even that probably is too low.

They question unemployment figures because both need that number to be as high as possible to justify their continuing to increase the money supply on a parabolic curve basis.

While private individuals haven’t been spending money, governments at every level have, or would like to do so.

From stimulus handouts, to talk of Universal Basic Income (more handouts but without a time limit) to talk in some quarters, such as Baltimore, of paying hoods a monthly stipend not to kill others, to proposed student loan bailouts, governments are always willing to spend your tax dollars and then some.

Excess money supply also has flowed into investment markets and alternative investments such as Bitcoin, catapulting them to record levels. Housing has rebounded on the back of excess liquidity and artificially low interest rates.

But, increasingly, knowledgeable people are noting the monetary and financial excesses and predicting gloom.

Hedge fund manager Ray Dalio sees bubbles in many investments.

Michael Burry, another investment guru whose prescient call that housing was a bubble in the mid-2000s was immortalized in the book and movie “The Big Short,” sees Weimar-style hyperinflation as a possibility in the U.S.

Post World War I Germany just printed unbacked money to pay off war reparations, crashed its currency and economy, gave rise to Adolf Hitler and eventually got us into World War II. That was the so-called Weimar Hyperinflation.

None of this could be described as desirable.

Yet Powell and Yellen and their friends are all to eager to take the risk of a historic repeat. They want to stoke the inflationary fires, believing that they can dial it back once things really begin to overheat.

They are supremely confident, although judging from their track records, there is no reason for that.

I’m not as confident, which is why I’m in investments to protect my purchasing power from inflation because, God knows, my Social Security won’t come close to keeping up with living expenses if and when inflation hits double digits or above.

I could be wrong. Powell and Yellen could keep the house of cards from collapsing, could continue to juggle the balls without fail, or any other metaphor you’d prefer.

But I’d rather side with the likes of Dalio and Burry, who have spent their adult lives battling and winning in the real world, not mostly navigating the halls of academia and government as have Powell and Yellen.

There is just so much news these days and so little time to digest it. Here’s a dose of written Pepto Bismol to help break it all down quickly and ease the digestive process.

The News: Joe Biden, appearing on a CNN town hall earlier this week replete with incomprehensible bon mots from him, at one point recounted waking up every day in the White House and inquiring of his wife, DR. JILL BIDEN!!!!!!! “Where the hell are we?”

The Views: This is further evidence that not much has changed with Biden, unfortunately. Imagine the rest of us waking up and wondering, how the hell did he (they) end up in the White House?

The News: New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is under fire for he and/or his staff allegedly hiding information about COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes in his state. The FBI, taking a break from persecuting conservatives, reportedly is looking into the matter.

The Views: If you’re thinking that Cuomo might be asked to return his Emmy, received for his great COVID-19 television briefings, guess again.

The News: Texas appears to be the worst example of southern states freezing as dramatic cold weather has crippled power grids, in part because windmills are frozen and solar panels aren’t functioning as expected.

The Views: Texans are leading the way in discovering how the United States is headed to the dark ages – pun intended – if the Green New Deal twerps get their way. Alternative power sources work great, as long as the demand is low and the weather never deviates from the norm. Comforting.

The News: California and Florida have taken polar opposite approaches to dealing with COVID-19. California treats citizens like criminals, with arbitrary lockdowns for the masses, but special treatment of the elites. Florida, meanwhile, is open for business. And the results are: Florida is doing marginally better – adjusted for population — in terms of virus deaths and infections.

The Views: Biden COVID advisor Andy Slavitt, during an appearance on left-wing cable news, stumbled, no doubt partly in surprise that friends would bring this up, and partly because the facts don’t support the dictatorial approach preferred by Biden and friends. Slavitt characterized the curious case of Florida doing better than California as “a little bit beyond our explanation.” A little bit? You think?

The News: Dr. Tony Fauci, AKA The Mask Nazi, does more flip flops than an Olympic gymnast. Of late the good doctor has opined that wearing masks is necessary even after receiving the COVID vaccine and in the recent past he has said wearing two more more masks is better than just one. This from a guy who used to say masks did no good.

The View: Unfortunately, Fauci would like you to wear the second mask (face diaper) over your eyes, so as to render you unable to read reports of his inconsistent utterances. Tell it to Florida, Dr. Fauci.

The News: In the era of defunding police, murder rates have skyrocketed in the United States, and predictably the leaders both in total numbers and percentage increases, are cities under Democratic control.

The Views: But fear not because Los Angeles, sixth among U.S. cities in terms of 2020 homicides, has a school district that is defunding school police and will replace the cops with “climate coaches.” That should put a brake on the murder rates.

The News: Conservative icon and radio legend Rush Limbaugh has died of cancer.

The Views: Social media was clogged with compassionate leftists rushing to post their celebration of Limbaugh’s death. Should conservatives cheer the death of a prominent liberal, they would be excoriated – rightly so – for their insensitivity. When leftists do this it’s perfectly acceptable and if you take offense to it, well, you’re just fighting their push for unity because you’re a bitter deplorable clinging to guns and religion.

And you probably don’t wear two masks, either!

Today we introduce the Come On, Man! as both an award and measure of hypocrisy.

We owe this Swiss army knife of lexicon to Joe Biden, who uses it ad nauseam as a catchall phrase, but most frequently when one of his many inconsistencies are challenged and Biden’s cross-firing synapses find comfort and temporary clarity in the familiar retort.

Search the internet and you will find Biden saying this maybe a billion times. When it becomes part of the next stimulus package, each U.S. resident, legal or illegal, will receive 2,000 Come On, Man! credits to be used to help get them through virus-related rough patches.

Think of the Come On, Man! as a verbal currency, a bitcoin of sorts, sharing that digital currency’s lack of intrinsic worth, yet possibly being valued greatly either by those on whom the Come On, Man! honor is bestowed, or by those who recognize it as marking the recipient for derision.

The movie world has Oscars, purportedly named because an executive secretary once remarked that the gold statue looked like her Uncle Oscar, and there are Tonys, live theater awards named for former theatrical influencer Antoinette Perry.

I guess we could call our awards Joeys, but I’m sticking with Come On, Man! The physical award will be a photo of a glassy-eyed Biden, staring blankly into the camera lens while shrugging his shoulders and showing his arms spread outward with palms upturned.

Allow me to anticipate the outrage that the gender-specific “Man” is used. Just quoting Biden. Perhaps his current wife, DR. JILL BIDEN!!!!!!!! , can get him to update his pet phrase to Come On, Man, Woman, or Gender Identity of Choice!

Without further delay, the envelopes, please.

Come On, Man!: To any involved with keeping Bruce Springsteen’s New Jersey arrest for alleged driving while intoxicated in mid-November quiet until after we could be “treated” to his unity advertisement during the past Super Bowl in which he drives aimlessly in Kansas during the winter in a Jeep with no top. Art imitating life?

Come On, Man!: To the Democrats who felt the need to make up evidence, doctor quotes, attribute quotes to those who denied them, and generally turn Impeachment II, the sequel, into as big a farce as Impeachment I. Have they no shame? Why no, they do not.

Come On, Man!: Also to impeachment Democrats, who were very eager to call witnesses, until Republicans said they would happily call 300 or more Democratic witnesses to testify under oath on matters such as what they knew and when they knew it regarding the Capitol violence. The collective U-turn by the left tells you all you need to know about their dirty hands in this matter.

Come On, Man! To all the naive among the left who think the woke mob types never will come for them. Get a dose of reality injected into your fevered brains from the experience of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., he of the sainted surname of traditional Democratic politics, who was booted from Instagram, purportedly for “posting misinformation” that did not wholeheartedly embrace virus vaccinations as the Holy Grail.

Come On, Man!: To all, including Joe Biden, who profess to want unity while sowing discontent. It is a doublespeak corruption of the term when it is used by hypocrites. And thus it joins examples such as diversity, empowerment, inclusiveness and justice on the ash heap of words whose meaning has been altered permanently so that they might be used as political dog whistles.

Come On, Man!: To Mitch McConnell, for his political fence straddling that makes him look like the quintessential symbol of the Republican party’s ongoing failure and the reason why a theoretical third political party headed by Donald Trump would outdraw the Republicans nationwide. Mitch can share the award with other Republicans of his ilk, people like Mitt Romney, Pat Toomey, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and Ben Sasse, always too eager to align with the opposition. Only one of these brave warriors actually will have to go before voters in the next election cycle to explain their vote.

Come On, Man!: To be shared by Biden and the aptly named T.J. Ducklo, Biden’s short-lived Deputy Press Secretary. Biden has famously said how he would unceremoniously fire anyone committing offenses such as Ducklo’s. Ducklo threatened a reporter working on a story about Ducklo’s romantic relationship with another reporter covering the Biden campaign. Was Ducklo fired? Silly you for thinking so. He was at first suspended one week without pay. But, when public outcry became rampant, even from Biden’s left-wing media sycophants, Ducklo still was not fired. Instead, he offered a resignation, that was accepted. Where was Joe in all of this? Good question.

Come On, Man! Indeed!!!!

Super Bowl LV television ratings seemed to be taking a cue from our most recent election, with results slow to be reported.

Customarily, as with elections, they release the Super Bowl ratings the day after the event. But this time the metrics from Nielsen were still being “processed and verified” Monday. The last time this sort of ratings delay happened was – never.

The more cynical no doubt had visions of truckloads of viewers being unpacked and counted in the middle of the night. Biden. Biden. Biden. Biden. Biden. Biden.

When the numbers were shared Tuesday, the results were tepid. Overall viewership, on television and streaming platforms, was off 8 percent from the last year. The 96.4 million viewers was the lowest total since 2007.

The most curious rationalization heard for this was the virus pandemic. That obviously affected the stadium crowd, which was limited to 24,835 due to COVID-19 protocols, making this the smallest Super Bowl attendance ever.

But that relatively paltry crowd was vocal, demonstrated both during the game, and beforehand when a video of Joe Biden and wife, DR. JILL BIDEN, who did most of the talking, showed on the stadium message board and was roundly booed.

Don’t these people know he’s the most popular president ever as measured by alleged votes received.

The drop in Super Bowl media viewership likely had a lot to do with the NFL’s decision to turn into a corporate monolithic social justice warrior, bombarding the fans with virtue signaling and identity politics.

The NBA, which went fullcourt on such things last year – hoops pun intended – has backed off this season in the interest of trying to win back fans.

Perhaps the NFL will have a rethink. Preaching to your fans/customers that if they don’t buy your political posturing they are mostly worthless human beings is not a formula for success.

From a personal perspective, I didn’t watch a single NFL game this season until the respective conference championship games and only did that to follow my wagers on both and to adjust them with in-game betting as necessary.

The Super Bowl was on our television largely because we had re-instituted our annual Super Bowl party after a two-year hiatus. Masks were optional. Wagering was rife.

The game almost was optional viewing. We paid passing attention, but not as much as we concentrated on the food, drink, and conversation, not to mention a couple of hyperactive granddaughters vying for eyeballs for the first half.

In the past, the commercials had commanded attention, too. But after the pregame emphasis on virtue signaling, it was evident commercials would follow suit, and largely they did. Ignore. Ignore. Ignore

The halftime show rambled on in the background as more food was consumed. Someone glanced at the TV screen and asked regarding the confusing images “what is this crap?” or words to that effect. As the host, in charge of the remote, I muted the TV and put the broadcast on pause, only to come back later and fast-forward past what I have read elsewhere was more political pap disguised as entertainment.

Another rationalization for the low ratings was the blowout nature of the game. I found the game very entertaining and the blowout nature even moreso, knowing that another Tom Brady title was going to send the navel-gazing leftists into their customary meltdown mode.

This also since has been confirmed. The most compelling examples on Twitter lamented a white quarterback winning the Super Bowl during black history month.

That Brady is one selfish, inconsiderate man.

One commercial we did notice, since researched by me because I didn’t catch all of it, was a two-minute Jeep ad featuring Bruce Springsteen.

The main character was a very aged guy who looked like an AARP Springsteen. Only after a closeup revealed his ear ring was the consensus reached that it was, indeed, Springsteen, and he hadn’t aged particularly well.

As the propaganda droned on, without any apparent purpose, at least one party-goer asked “Is this a Jeep commercial?”

Sort of. It was a commercial paid for in the name of Jeep, but mostly it was a social justice warrior plea for unity, which these days means lockstep agreement with any ridiculous scheme the leftists propose lest one be labeled a deplorable, domestic terrorist, idiot, racist, misogynist, or just a general cult member in need of re-education.

Speaking of ridiculous behavior and the need for re-education, Springsteen drove around between snow covered fields in an old Jeep — with the roof off – in the depth of winter.

When it was announced ahead of the game that firms such as Pepsi and Budweiser, long-time Super Bowl staples, would not be running ads in this broadcast, I ventured that maybe this indicated they didn’t want to bow to peer pressure and feel compelled to run politically correct ads at the cost of $5.6 million for 30 seconds.

I think I likely am correct in that assessment.

Pepsi was among the soft drinks on our refreshment menu, but sorry Bud, it was Coors Light in the beer cooler. Maybe next time.

The political ad – I mean Jeep ad – ended with an outline of the 48 states between Canada and Mexico (Hawaii and Alaska don’t matter?) with the message “To the ReUnited States of America.”

Fittingly, there was a large, red, five-pointed star interposed between the words ReUnited and States. That image was particularly striking to us who remember it as the heraldic symbol of the Russian Communist Party. All that was missing was the hammer and sickle

The message I got from the Jeep ad is never again would I buy one of their products. That was virtually 100 percent true even beforehand given that Jeep now is a Fiat Chrysler brand, with all the attendant lack of reliability. But this pandering ad clinched it.

I had bought a new 1979 CJ-7, when Jeep was owned by American Motors.

Those days are but a fleeting memory and this Jeep ode to political correctness in advertising form just reinforces the reality of how far our nation has slipped.

The Statue of Liberty is now like the elderly woman in those much-imitated ads plaintively lamenting: “I’ve fallen, and I can’t get up.”

Tom Brady came though again with his seventh Super Bowl triumph and, as a side bonus, sent the leftists into meltdown.

It was written in this space recently how Brady drives to distraction the liberals, socialists, social justice warriors and various other inhabitants of the far left end of the political spectrum. He’s successful, unrepentant for that, and has been willing in the past to exhibit publicly conservative leanings.

Oh, and he’s a white male who doesn’t wear Che Guevara T-shirts or quote from Mao’s “Little Red Book,” which these days makes the guy a target of opportunity.

The Armour Meathead columnist for USA Today, who has made it a cottage industry to disparage Brady for his acquaintanceship with Donald Trump, was forced in the aftermath of this latest Brady championship to acknowledge the guy had picked apart favored Kansas City, with apparent ease.

To appease her woke audience, Armour Meathead used a separate example of her verbal vomit to take shots at the NFL for not having enough coaches “of color.” That was her postgame social justice warrior meme of a column.

She apparently is the digital equivalent of the TV series “Have Gun-Will Travel,” only her motto is have laptop-will pontificate.

This is a good thing for her because the leftists are out to ban both guns and travel, which would leave a modern day Paladin unemployed and unable to enjoy the finer points of his existence in a San Francisco luxury hotel.

Armour Meathead is not alone in her crusade to diminish any success a white male from the political right might enjoy.

According to zerohedge.com, Twitter was aflame Sunday not with odes to the continuing greatness of Tom Brady, but rather attacks on him for being seen not wearing a mask as he entered the stadium.

One post relayed on zerohedge remarked how all Brady’s friends “seem to be white.”

Now there is a crime for you in 2021, being white, successful and having white friends.

Quick, get Nancy Pelosi on this. We need legislation to abolish such travesty.

But of course ignore that Saturday night in Washington, D.C., Pelosi’s home away from her $25,000 fridge stocked with overpriced ice cream home in San Francisco, Black Lives Matters crew members were marching through the city in a “Fxxx the police” rally replete with harassment of innocent bystanders and threats of “if we don’t get it, burn it down.”

I’m thinking “it” is not more coaches of color in the NFL.

Police on hand for this march mostly just watched. Probably they were on the lookout for some disgruntled Trump supporters to arrest for domestic terrorism.

These right-wing Trump fans ought to petition the lamestream media for the same treatment as the BLM crowd, that being to be labeled just a group of largely peaceful demonstrators whose threats and actual attacks on private and public property are conveniently lumped into the category of giving voice to the oppressed.

If you think our most recent presidential election was anything less than an outright oppression of Trump voters, you haven’t looked very closely at the facts.

This brings me back to Brady. If and when he is finished adding to his collection of Super Bowl rings, it strikes me that Brady would make a great candidate for high political office.

Unlike most of our political leaders, left and right, Brady has been forced to rise or fall on his own merits, competing in a meritocracy where deeds, not promises, are the currency of success.

How refreshing it would be to have such leadership on the political front.

And how amusing it would be to see the leftists drown in puddles of their tears should Brady be successful in politics, too.

Here’s hoping that Tom Brady, currently passing the football for Tampa Bay, wins another Super Bowl on Sunday because of how it will play with some sportswriter hacks who have attempted to turn this past week into yet another political hit job on conservatives.

Instead of writing of Brady’s pursuit of a seventh Super Bowl win, or his 10^th appearance in the big game, or the fact that at age 43 he is rewriting standards for longevity, some, such as USA Today keyboard torturer Nancy Armour, have turned their coverage into yet more attempts at left-wing retribution toward anyone associated in any way with former president Donald Trump.

Brady reeks of white privilege, according to the Armour Meathead, because he isn’t into discussing politics – specifically Donald Trump – as she and some others would command in the lead-up to this game.

So Armour skewered Brady in her column, then got more than a little bit of blowback on Twitter, calling her out for everything from lack of writing skill, to lack of football insight, to an overabundance of confused column ideas.

It would be unfair to question Armour’s competence to write sports simply based on her sex. But it is similarly unfair to suggest that all the women who show up in sports media, particularly on television, are there based entirely on their insight.

From personal experience, I worked at a newspaper that decided the sports department needed a female writer and so hired one. Early in the running, she wrote in a season preview that a football team would use the “Eye Formation” on offense.

Of course she should have written “I formation,” a description owing to the quarterback, fullback and halfback lined up behind center in a straight line that resembles the letter I.

But she didn’t know any better, so she wrote “eye.” You might guess that her insights into the nuances of sports were similarly lacking. This was understandable since her background was selling office equipment.

However, she was an attractive woman, which was not lost on the guy who hired her as a freelancer after I’d told her to check with him about changing careers. He noted her physical appearance in thanking me for sending her his way.

It’s not a coincidence that few, if any, female TV sports reporters are unattractive. After all, how tough is it to ask each coach before the game for the keys to victory? Might as well have some eye candy asking the questions.

And at halftime the stock question, requiring little in-depth knowledge, is to inquire of the coach behind on the scoreboard what his team will need to do better in the second half to change that? The coach who is ahead must be asked what his team will need to do to keep the lead?

Seldom will you hear a football coach asked, for example, about his cornerback getting beaten like a drum in man coverage and will he need to rotate a safety over the top to help, thereby clearing the middle of the field for opposing receivers?

At this point I likely will be accused of misogyny, the SAT-approved word to describe any man charged with hatred, prejudice and contempt toward women.

My wife of 40 years and counting, my three granddaughters, my 84-year-old mother, all would be mildly surprised to learn that I hate them all for their sex.

It’s not that Nancy Armour is a woman that makes her writing distasteful. It’s just that she’s a one-tune leftist who apparently hates Brady, white men in general, and this nation as evidenced by her periodic screeds.

Armour has written about the need to stop playing our national anthem at sporting events. In another column she labeled critics of black NFL quarterback Cam Newton as racists.

Armour didn’t seem interested in Newton’s political preferences.

What about Armour’s political leanings? Maybe that should be her next column, in the interest of full disclosure. Or is she utilizing white woman’s privilege?

And if Armour’s readership thought this past week’s column sounded familiar, it should have. Back in January 2017, in advance of another Super Bowl, Armour was dogging Brady again in a column with the lead paragraph “Tom Brady no longer gets a pass on his friendship with Donald Trump.”

Get some new material, Nancy,

Armour is just another facet in the multi-pronged spear that is Brady hatred. Our locals hate him for beating their beloved Steelers with such regularity when he was with New England.

Others hate him because they believe he’s a cheater who mandates underinflated footballs to enhance his performance. These people don’t follow the science – conducted by professors at places such as MIT and Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University — that indicated cold, wet weather conditions could have accounted for inflation variances in the New England-Indianapolis game in question.

Swept aside was the fact that 3 of 4 footballs checked that were used by Indianapolis were judged underinflated, too, after having been outside in miserable weather for a half of the game.

The haters also neglect to mention that once the footballs were pumped up to specs for the second half, the Patriots outscored the Colts by an even bigger margin.

The NFL suspended Brady for four games, which falls under the category of not allowing the facts to interfere with a good harangue.

I don’t expect Brady to win Sunday, and it would cost me a few bucks if he does since I’ve put my money on Kansas City.

But I never thought Brady could do what he has this season, moving to a new franchise and directing them to the Super Bowl even as his former New England organization wallowed in obscurity without him.

Here’s hoping you get it done again, Tom Brady, and extend a well-deserved middle finger to the Nancy Armours of this world.

Punxsutawney Pelosi emerged from her Capitol burrow today and saw her shadow, indicating at least two more years of tyrannical rule.

The bipolar pursuit of bipartisanship has been thrown onto the scrap heap of all political psyops and the Democrats will now proceed to leverage their thin control of the presidency and both houses of Congress into what amounts to an our-way-or-the-highway example of agenda implementation.

Ten foolish Republican senators trekked to see Mr. Unity, Joe Biden Monday, heeding his call for bipartisanship. I hope they at least got a few drinks and snacks for their trouble.

It’s all a dog and pony show. If the Republicans had agreed to any and all Biden requests, then the illusion of bipartisanship would have been put forth.

But had the senators displayed the temerity to stick to their principles, as apparently they did, they would be shown the door.

No sooner had these quixotic people in pursuit of bipartisanship exited Biden’s palace than the announcement was made to go forward with reconciliation. That is the process by which Democrats can ramrod through with simple majority votes things like dispensing open-ended handouts in the name of virus relief.

In this case “simple” has many meanings. If the Senate votes on party lines, it will be a 50-50 tie. VP Kamala Harris breaks the tie. Simple.

And under this regime, even the most simple-minded initiatives cannot be ruled out. For now the procedure will be used to hand out governmental money like Halloween candy, but with one major difference.

If you or I, or businesses, want to pass out treats to the kids, we first must have the financial wherewithal to purchase same. When the government passes out bribes to voters, I mean the monetary candy of stimulus, it just borrows more money.

This reconciliation way of passing legislation takes a bit longer than governing by executive order, but the final result is the same – unchecked power by a party that lost House of Representatives seats in the most recent election, achieved only 50-50 parity in the Senate by virtue of winning two Senate runoff elections in the highly questioned ballot-counting Georgia, and won the presidency by a thin margin the Trump supporters, and some neutrals, perceived to have failed the smell test.

It will be this way for at least two years, until mid-term elections. Likely it will last past that length of time given the penchant of Republicans to run weak candidates and campaigns and fail to demonstrate to the base the ability to stick up for principles of the right even when it isn’t easy.

Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow today, or at least his top-hatted handlers said so, meaning Phil predicted six more weeks of winter.

If only this country’s period of darkness would be this brief.

There will be more federal government dog and pony shows along the way, designed to placate the masses that there is give and take in the highest levels of politics. But draw back the curtain and the people pulling the levers of power all will have a capital D stamped on their butts.

A good reminder of their drunken power orgy will be the ongoing impeachment effort directed at former president Trump. Impeachment being a method to remove sitting officials, the more rational among the constitutional crowd have branded this a farce since Trump already is out. More correctly, it’s just the latest farce.

Still, unless a lot of Republican senators get a sudden case of jelly spine, Trump will not be convicted in this sham impeachment trial in the Senate.

Were the major media outlets unbiased, they would be raising questions about the need for this and, should Trump be acquitted as expected, they would come down hard on this exercise in time-wasting by the Democrats.

Don’t hold your breath waiting to see either that, or Democrats making legitimate attempts at bipartisan governing in view of their razor-thin edges in the federal government.

As written about here previously, the social media investment crowd on Reddit has its sights trained on silver. The precious metal bounced big Monday, in Asia, Europe and the United States.

Also as predicted here, the people in charge, who seem to have a mission to keep a lid on the public making investing profits (as opposed to banks and investment firms) have tried to stomp on silver just as they did with GameStop and other stocks that were flying on the strength of runs on the shorters – hedge funds and other assorted financial behemoths.

In the case of the silver, the CME Group has announced raising margins on Comex silver futures by 18 percent.

This supposedly was in response to the price action. Let’s see: Spot silver got as high as $29.55 Monday. The March Comex silvers future topped at 29.50. Notably, both were down considerably later in the day from those peaks.

Even at the peaks they were only about 60 percent of all-time highs. Do the people who run stock exchanges fall all over themselves to rein in a runaway Tesla stock. Or Google? Or Apple? Or Netflix?

Why no, no they do not.

They like it when their darlings run and the big institutions are profiting. They don’t like it when the big institutions have the small investor horning in on the big guys’ game.

Make no mistake, this increase in margin, which is the percentage of actual value that an investor must post to control a contract, is aimed, indirectly, at small investors

The regular silver contract on the Comex is 5,000 ounces, or at $30 an ounce, $150,000. Even the so-called “mini” contract is 1,000 ounces, or $30,000 total value at $30-an-ounce silver. No small investors here.

But the small investors buy their products, like the silver exchange traded fund SLV, based on silver futures prices. Similarly, silver mining stocks rise and fall based on futures prices.

Futures markets in the United States don’t open until Tuesday morning. But the precious metals did resume trading in China as early as 6 p.m. east coast time Monday evening and already the silver spot price is, according to Kitco.com, down 50 cents to $28.05 an ounce as I write this.

The good news for me is I’d sold much of my SLV in the premarket session of the New York Stock Exchange Monday, anticipating this sort of price capping. I didn’t get the top price, which came during the regular session, but close enough.

I did buy back a little SLV during the day, at a lower price, just to have a bit for trading purposes. It is, of course, down much more now.

Playing small ball and taking profits whenever they appear is a lesson precious metals investors should have learned through the years. The people behind the curtain are quick to act to take away the punch bowl when the riffraff are partaking, so cash in profits early.

Similarly, tales of GameStop multi-millionaires who ran small options positions into seven-figure profits will end badly if they get greedy and forget to sell to lock in those mammoth gains.

For latecomers to GameStop it’s even more likely to end badly for them – maybe already it has with that stock hitting the skids Monday.

But silver is a bit of a different issue in that it has a strong fundamental case beyond any short squeeze attempt.

It is more than a little possible that silver, even if its price declines for a time due to the market rules being invoked against it, will rise above those efforts and continue onward toward a rendezvous with the approximate $50-an-ounce all-time highs visited in 1980 and 2011.

I will be watching closely, looking for an opportunity to reload paper trading vehicles in any decline.

You would do well to note that regardless of how the paper price of silver is manipulated lower through futures, the actual cost of acquiring coins, rounds or bars, the sort of stuff that hurts if you drop it on your feet, will bear little resemblance to that futures price.

Already huge precious metals dealers are reporting having little or no product to sell. And if any of them do have product, the premiums – the amount investors must pay over the spot price – are large.

Adherents of gold and silver dream of the time when the physical market eventually over-runs what they believe to be fraudulent futures prices.

Grab some popcorn and watch the show.

While blowing up balloons for our youngest granddaughter’s birthday party yesterday – she’s two years of age – thoughts turned to inflation of another sort, that measured by rising prices.

The Federal Reserve Board is on a continued quest to reach, then exceed slightly, a two-percent annual inflation for the United States. These federal bankers are attempting to do so by creating excess monetary liquidity aimed at supercharging the economy and meanwhile holding interest rates to historically low levels.

So far, the inflation quest isn’t working according to government figures, which put the price inflation rate in the U.S. for 2020 at 1.4 percent.

Other sources, such as ShadowStats, beg to differ with that official report. ShadowStats attempts to measure the inflation rate in the old manner (more on that in the next paragraphs) and estimates inflation for 2020 of 8.9 percent, down from 9.5 percent in 2019, but still multiples of the official figures.

If you do much shopping for extravagant luxuries such as food or energy, or you pay rent or property taxes on a home you own, or you purchase healthcare or transportation, you probably tend to believe the ShadowStats inflation figures, which don’t utilize substitution or the suggestively named hedonic adjustments.

Inflation measures often involve a basket of goods. Substitution is the presumption that if the price of steak in that basket soars, people will instead purchase more hamburger, or chicken, or pork. This is disingenuous in my book because regardless of how you change your eating habits to address price inflation, the price of steak and thereby the inflation rate on that basket of goods, increased.

Hedonic adjustments, which sound ironically close to hedonism – the pursuit of pleasure and personal self-indulgence – tries to factor in quality. A higher-performing computer, while costing more, might have its inflationary price impact adjusted downward because it is judged to be a qualitative improvement.

Again, this is questionable in my book. Most people never challenge the capabilities of their computers, so if a new one performs a tad better than the one it replaces, but costs a couple of hundred bucks more, that’s still price inflation in my book.

The Fed is playing a dangerous game with attempts to goose inflation. History presents many examples of how such fiddling with fire explodes to inferno stature.

While the Fed would find 2 percent inflation favorable, it would have figurative blood flowing in the financial streets if inflation hit 15 percent, as it nearly did in April 1980 (14.76 percent). For the entire year of 1980 the United States inflation rate was 13.5 percent.

So, the Fed wants inflation because it tends to encourage household spending and boost the economy. And, as long as the inflation rate doesn’t get too high, it doesn’t result in wage-demand inflation.

But rising inflation does put artificially low interest rates under pressure. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, former head of the Federal Reserve, said during Congressional testimony recently that while our national debt levels are troublesome, those historically low interest rates make this a great time to “act big” in doling out stimulus cash to individuals, businesses, and other concerns.

Our federal government already is the world’s largest debtor and those stimulus handouts are going to be paid for by increasing the debt. If a rise in inflation beyond the Federal Reserve’s modest 2 percent target results in spiking interest rates, the increased amount of money necessary to pay debt holders would severely cramp the government’s ability to fund traditional services.

The 30-year government bonds currently yielding under 2 percent, were paying over 14 percent in 1980. A return to such higher interest rates would be disastrous fiscally.

The Federal Reserve is attempting to thread the needle of provoking 2 percent inflation while avoiding going much higher on that measure and thereby pushing interest rates significantly higher.

If it fails, we all get the equivalent of a sharp needle in the eye.

The wiser heads realize that Donald Trump’s rise to political prominence was merely a symptom of growing mistrust and suspicion among those of us in the common class who we are being taken advantage of by the elites.

Democrats twice were able to tamp down their populist crusader running for president, Bernie Sanders. The Republicans were not as successful with Trump, who overcame the opposition of Democrats as well as haters in his own Republican party to win the presidency.

The thinly veiled alliance of the two establishment parties to take down Trump in his bid for re-election spoke volumes about what the elites, the deep state, the people who really run things, are all about.

Mitch McConnell, lead Republican in the Senate, was all too eager to signal his willingness to find Trump guilty in a second impeachment trial, until backlash within his party forced him to reconsider because he didn’t want to lose support and display his weak leadership in such a public forum.

In a word, it is about control. Democrats and Republicans so fear Trump’s political viability going forward that they want to neuter him in any way possible in order not to risk losing that control.

And for all of you who eagerly voted for Joe Biden expecting your $2,000 stimulus handout, how’s that going? Already it’s been marked down to $1,400.

Now, as the Democrats concentrate on tying up the Senate with an impeachment trial they are not likely to win because the Constitution requires a two-thirds vote to convict, not a simple majority, the wait for money for the masses continues.

Even if the Democrats got all their members to vote for conviction of Trump that would leave the Democrats 17 votes short of the needed conviction total.

The penalty for conviction would be removal from office. But Trump already is out, so what this second impeachment amounts to is political theater. Meanwhile, the nation’s business – your handout stimulus money – is on hold.

The battle for elites’ control of the masses spilled over into the financial markets the past week. Keep reading, because even if you think you have no interest in investments, you really do and should understand what’s happening in that world.

Simply put, Wall Street already runs on a hybrid capitalist-socialist structure. The banks and investing firms there embrace capitalism when they are raking in huge profits. When they suffer losses, they want to socialize those losses among the populace – read all of us who pay taxes.

Think of 2008’s financial collapse which rose out of over-leveraged financial institutions making out-sized bets with money they didn’t have. When they lost and the piper needed to be paid, taxpayers were put on the hook to bail them out.

Last week, if you watch the financial channels on satellite TV – I do – there was a parade of aggrieved hedge fund managers and sympathetic talking heads – lamenting the action in GameStop.

For background, GameStop is a dying chain of retail outlets, in largely deserted shopping malls, selling video games. GameStop declared a loss of more than $4 million in its latest operating quarter, which was reported Dec. 8, 2020.

The stock was trading at $17.08 early in January. It began last week at $61.13, traded as high as $483 and closed Friday at $325 after a convulsive trading day during which was the stock as high as $413.98 and as low as $250.

Hedge funds and other big fish on Wall Street were short on the stock, a bet that its price would continue to decline. They were short, in part via the options market, a total equivalent to 130 percent of the stock’s available shares.

But an online movement birthed in the Wall Street Bets forum of Reddit sniffed out the absurd over-leverage, got a so-called short squeeze in motion and the big boys had it handed to them by a populist movement of small investors. The big guys and gals have combined losses so far on this short estimated at $20 billion.

See if this sounds familiar. Losing the game, the elites got the rules changed. Many brokerages stopped allowing purchases of GameStop, or limited purchases to as little as a single share.

Other methods regarding limiting investor funding or options markets access, were employed to attempt to abort the meteoric price rise and so save the powerful from further losses.

These are the methods used by the government and elites to stomp on the masses. Margin requirements (borrowing costs) are raised on investments they don’t prefer. Sell-only dictates are put into force.

Behind the scenes price support or asset dumps by the Plunge Protection Team, AKA Working Group on Financial Markets (a real thing, feel free to search the internet for it), help support or clobber a given asset as the masters desire.

Sometimes they also bring these weapons to bear on rebels among their elite class, as they did in early 1980 to punish the Hunt brothers for their attempt to corner the silver market.

I wouldn’t touch GameStop with a 10-foot pole in these wild times. But I do invest in silver and the Reddit people are being steered toward silver and the companies that mine it, such as First Majestic, which was up from just under $14 to just over $18 last week.

Silver, as measured by the spot price, jumped from $25.48 an ounce to $26.98 last week. It was even higher Friday before losing momentum in an atypical price action.

If the Reddit crew can embolden others to invest in silver, a precious metal that was as high as $50 an ounce in 1980 and was at $49 plus in 2011, but sits only slightly above half of those historic highs all these many years later, results could be spectacular.

And there will be public outcry for those in charge to do something to save those who are considerably short silver.

Meanwhile, it has been revealed that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her husband made an outsized bet in December in the way of options on Tesla, a stock that stands to benefit from Biden’s executive order made since then for the government to buy electric vehicles.

What did she know and when did she know it?

Also, more tax incentives are being proposed for people to purchase electric vehicles. All of these initiatives will be pushed through legislatively by Pelosi, someone even the brain-dead would concede has quite the conflict of interest on the matter.

But Pelosi and spouse are among the elite, so you should be OK with that.

You are OK with it, aren’t you?