This post is specifically directed to my politically Right-of-Center and Independent friends…..

Liberalism is not some monolithic presence. Everyone who joins the Democratic Party does not subscribe to some common manual. We don’t all gather at a pizza parlor every other Tuesday and take an oath to destroy America. We are your neighbors, your friends, your family members. We celebrate our common holidays, send our kids off to school, wear our nation’s uniform, pay taxes and complain about life’s frequent irritations just like you do. When I hear people on the political Left say dumb things, I react much as you do. I shake my head when some fellow Lefty objects to the phrase “illegal alien” and insists that everyone substitute “undocumented immigrant” instead.

And while we’re talking about politically correct phrases and such, I have a few gripes of my own…quite a few actually. But I’ll keep them to a minimum. Whenever winter rolls around, trump invariably compliments himself for restoring “Merry Christmas” to the English vocabulary. When exactly was this greeting ever expunged? To hear trump tell it, you’d get the impression that before he stalwartly plunged into battle, saying something other than “Happy Holidays” would land you in prison.

The idea of using a generic expression in a crowd that includes non-Christians was a matter of courtesy, to avoid insulting people. But if somebody insists on greeting Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, atheists, etc. with a phrase that is, for them, devoid of all religious import or that challenges their own faith, he or she is not going to get a lethal injection. They may be considered thoughtless or boorish, but that’s about it. Imagine you are a proud Republican in a room filled mostly with members of the Blue Party. If a person looked your way and greeted you as a loyal Democrat…well, you get the idea.

Here’s something else that annoys me…this business of DEI. I often hear Kamala Harris being referred to as a DEI hire. When Joe Biden chose Harris as his Vice Presidential running mate, he did so for a multitude of reasons. Her gender would presumably attract female voters. Her multiracial heritage would likely appeal to Blacks and Indians. Her relative youth would most likely make Biden’s age more palatable to younger voters. JFK did very much the same thing when he picked LBJ to join him on the 1960 Democratic ticket. Johnson was older than Kennedy. Jack was concerned that some voters thought he was too young. Johnson was a southerner which helped balance Jack’s eastern roots. Johnson was perceived as common which offset the perception that Jack was a plutocrat. So LBJ was a DEI hire. What of it?

In other contexts, the choice of one person over someone else because they add additional value beyond nominal characteristics is manifestly reasonable. If I were a young fellow in search of a wife, would it be objectionable to pick a woman who was smart, witty, accomplished, kind and beautiful in addition to being fertile?

Here’s another grievance…. Why is Kamala blamed for our immigration issues? Her remit was to go to Central America and to work with the authorities in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador to find ways to stem the flow of immigrants to the US. In this, she was remarkably successful, reducing the number of immigrants by approximately 50%. It was never her assignment to focus on our Southern border itself. It was Republicans who dreamed up the title, “Border Tsar.” And if we are going to assign blame, why exactly do we not condemn trump who demanded that GOP members of Congress vote against the bipartisan border bill that those same Republicans had helped to write…all so trump could continue to complain about immigration while campaigning. Frankly, it leaves the impression that Republicans don’t really care about immigration much at all, except as a campaign talking point.

Then there is this issue…Why exactly do Republicans blame the Biden Administration for inflation? Inflation is a worldwide economic reality. Most of it was caused by the pandemic, which was not released on the world by trump, but did occur during his term of office. Manufacturing plants everywhere shut down. Supply chains were cut. Ports were closed. Store shelves were empty. Goods and services were dramatically reduced. ALL of this was inflationary. trump added $8 trillion to the national debt. THAT was inflationary. trump gave a gigantic tax cut to the wealthiest Americans and richest US corporations. That, too, was inflationary. And that diverted revenue found its way into the pockets of America’s most prosperous citizens a second time when those big companies that benefitted from these enormous tax breaks didn’t allow the money to trickle down to the middle class and poor, but instead used those funds to buy back stocks and thus artificially pump up their share value…also inflationary. And what about all those trump-initiated tariffs that set off trade wars and produced (you got it) more inflation?

When Putin first invaded Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula in 2014, he began interdicting Ukrainian shipping in the Black Sea. Since then, through the entirety of both the trump and Biden Administrations, this increasing harassment by Russia has reduced the world’s grain supply, provoking yet more inflation. Fortunately, Ukraine has been able to hem the Russian navy in against the eastern shoreline, allowing crop and grain shipments to get through. The arms supplied by the US and NATO to Ukraine have turned the tide in the Black Sea.

Biden only added half as much as trump to our debt and actually established the first national infrastructure program since the Great Depression. This was inflationary too, but at least it provided a service to average citizens, including rural Americans who can now use broadband WiFi to complain about how Joe is mistreating them.

The increase in interest rates and the concomitant reduction in the money supply was clearly not Biden’s fault. The Federal Reserve Board took those actions to slow the economy, to reduce inflation and to avoid a general recession. The inflation rate has been headed toward the optimal level of 2% since 2022. It is currently at 2.9% and is still going down. Thankfully, the predicted recession never hit. Presidents, including Biden, have no direct control over the Fed. That is by design. Balancing the economy should not be a partisan exercise. The only real influence any President has over the Fed is in the power to appoint members to the Board. trump has expressed anger toward the current Fed Chairman, Jerome Powell. Yet it was trump who nominated him for appointment in 2017.

If the sole reason for blaming worldwide inflation on the Biden Administration is the fact that Joe’s presidency coincides with an inflationary cycle, then by that same logic, the culprit for last week’s Southern California earthquake must be the fact that it was a Thursday.

Finally, companies who have used the pandemic and its aftermath to gouge Americans with higher prices SHOULD be blamed for contributing to inflation. But it is Biden who has been fighting monopolistic and price-hiking practices in business. It is trump who wants to castrate the government agencies that regulate big business. It was Biden who walked the picket line during the UAW strike. And it is trump who hangs out with the wealthy at his golf resort and who brags about firing employees.

Here’s one of my real pet peeves. What is this crap about Biden strangling the oil industry? He is no more responsible for elevated prices at the pump than you are. On the global market, the sanctions against Russia for invading their peaceful neighbor have increased the cost of oil. Fortunately though, America is energy independent. The United States currently pumps more oil than trump did during any year of his presidency. In fact, the US produces more petroleum than any other nation or most combinations of countries on earth.

Whenever I hear trump prattling on about how he’s going to “drill, drill, drill,” I wonder who the hell he thinks believes that blather. Our price of gas is largely attributable to the oil refineries, not the actual availability of oil. US oil refineries are almost all set up to handle foreign-produced heavy crude. American oil fields deliver light crude. The largest US refinery companies and consortiums would rather shut down facilities and charge more to the public at the pump than build refineries designed to process light crude oil. These companies buy foreign heavy crude because it is cheaper for them than processing America’s light crude. To mitigate high gas station prices, Biden has been releasing a fraction of our Strategic Oil Reserves to the US market.

My list of unjustified attacks on the current Administration is far from exhausted, but in the interests of brevity, I’ll stop with this… Crime is NOT going up.

(See graph above)

To the contrary, it has been headed down, STEEPLY throughout Biden’s Presidency. And this fabricated nonsense about so-called “migrant crime” comes from the same hallucinatory realm that “Jewish Space Lasers” come from. Google the topic yourself. Migrants commit fewer crimes than native born Americans. PERIOD.

As I stated at the beginning, Democrats are just like you…We are imperfect, just like you. We try and sometimes succeed, but often fail, just like you. We don’t all agree with each other and we are just as apt to make mistakes as anybody. But trump has made a virtue of telling lies. And as Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, said:

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”

Between trump and Biden, one person was willing to topple our republic to remain President. The other resigned his candidacy to preserve our republic.