Sleepless in Midland

Maybe all this vote recounting will lead to voter registration reform

The Clinton/Stein vote count project will likely focus on finding only two things -- uncounted Clinton votes and unqualified Trump votes. That's unfortunate, because just about every rational person suspects that there were a lot of people voting for Clinton who shouldn't have been voting. If the numbers are small, they may not affect the ultimate outcome. But we really don't know.

Americans would like to think the system is solid and reliable. But local registrars in Blue states are loyal Democrats. And let's face it. Most of us have become suspicious of government whether run by Democrats or Republicans.

Hopefully, all this focus on recounting votes might reinvigorate the movement to reform voter registration in spite of all the claims that purging the dead from voter rolls and requiring proof of citizenship are discriminatory.

--------

Of interest here is an article from dailysignal.com. See More Than 800,000 Noncitizens May Have Voted in 2016 Election, Expert Says. That "expert" is merely extrapolating from information voluntarily given in previous years. And it wouldn't take an expert to expect the motivation this year would be stronger. But the point is there. Many non-citizens vote when there is no one to stop them.

Portable device fires directional microwave energy to create a miniature EMP

This has got to be the next best thing to a ray gun. The present model is a bit large -- it needs a 20 foot shipping container and a diesel generator. But the potential is huge, if it works as planned.

What this "Phaser" does is fire a directed blast of microwave at the target. And it's basically a small EMP which will knock out the electronics of anything in the path of the wave.

You can tell from the title of this article what its intended use is: The Army's Real-Life "Phaser" Would Knock Out an Entire Drone Swarm With One Shot.

That's nice if the enemy is using weaponized drones. But let's think big here. Couldn't they also serve as an anti-missile system?

At the very least it might be useful to disable a Russian jet should one try to harass a Navy ship like they did recently. Oh, we would rescue the pilot, but the video of that expensive jet sinking in the deep blue sea would likely go viral.

Obamacare -- repeal and replace -- it shouldn't be that hard

Politicians who are married to the idea of preserving Obamacare tout numbers to buttress their case. The most prominent number is 20 million. That's the number of people they claim will lose insurance coverage if Obamacare is repealed.

There's an honest to goodness expert on the subject out there, and that's Betsy McCaughey. She was on C-Span the other day making the case for repeal and replace. And she's set out the position at Who said Trump can’t repeal ObamaCare? Excerpt:

Will 20 million lose coverage?

Not even close: 16 million of those who gained coverage are enrolled in Medicaid, the public program for low-income residents. ObamaCare allowed states to expand the category of those eligible to sign up for Medicaid, with the federal government covering the tab.

Repeal could result in less federal funding. But no one is pushing to abolish the nation’s health-safety net. And states that just expanded Medicaid are unlikely to do a 180 and shrink it. The 16 million are likely safe. ...

In short, about 5 million previously uninsured people — not the bogus 20 million — may need help after repeal. Trump is proposing market reforms to lower costs and increase choices for consumers stuck in the individual market.

And about those people with pre-existing conditions:

ObamaCare architect Ezekiel Emanuel says forcing the healthy to enroll is essential. Sorry — there’s a fairer way. Trump would allow insurers to charge sick people more, then subsidize these “high risk” customers with taxpayer dollars. That spreads the cost fairly over the whole population, instead of burdening people in the individual market.

So repeal and replace is possible if the will power it there.

Ron Paul is shilling for system that preserves food 25 years -- he's one optimistic pessimist

Ron Paul has radio commercials in which he shills for Harvest Right, the company that makes a freeze dryer for home use. Dr. Paul proclaims that freeze drying food will preserve it for 25 years.

Cue the irony detectors. Paul is pessimistic enough to think he needs to preserve food for as long as 25 years. He's 81 years old. Now that is one optimistic pessimist.

Democrats rethink emphasis on identity politics -- women, minorities hit hardest

Democrats have been fighting the melting pot theory and working against immigrant assimilation for years. And it finally bit them back when a boisterous white guy came along who inspired a lot of people to proclaim they want to make America great again.

Now there's no shortage of people ready to change that particular aspect of the Democrat party. Even Bernie Sanders is in on the game: Sanders: Dems must move beyond 'identity politics'.

I dunno. They've used it to agitate their base for so long their voters may have a difficult time letting go. It's the only place where the phrase "diversity is our strength" has any validity. Now if only they could find a place for the whites.

Suggestions for Dems -- keep doing what you're doing, please

Every time republicans lose a major election some Democrat can be expected to lecture conservatives on what they should do to improve.

So it's a little bit gratifying to see Judah Friedman's satirical piece, Dear Democrats: Just Keep It Up. There he lists many of the things Democrats do so proudly, then wonder why we don't love them.

Among those things are Obama's contempt for people who voted for the next president, the protesters blocking streets real Americans use to go to work, celebrity endorsements, calling political opponents (and police) racists, persecuting Christians but glorifying Muslims -- you get the idea.

For a good schadenfreudian chuckle, read the whole thing.  And hope they do keep it up.

This Thanksgiving let's thank the garbage men of America

That's not a joke. We generate tons of garbage, and hauling it away is a dirty job. But someone has to do it.

I know. I worked that job one summer during high school. And back in the day, a garbage man rode the side of a truck, lifted, and dumped trash cans into the truck by hand. Today, mechanical arms do the heavy lifting as the truck rolls down the alley, picks up a dumpster and empties it in the truck. The typical garbage man sits in the truck all day. But that's OK. He still has to endure the tedium, and he still has to maintain the schedule. Then there's the health risk of sitting all day that we hear about.

So as we approach the Thanksgiving holidays there will be a lag in the garbage pick-up, and those neighborhoods where dumpster hogs like to load up the dumpsters with empty boxes and tree limbs will experience overflowing trash bins. So let's give thanks to those people who haul it off, the garbage men.

---------

Meanwhile, here in Midland, Texas, Mayor Morales recently told an audience that the vehicle manufacturers no longer make the side loading garbage trucks currently in use in the city. Eventually, the city will begin purchasing front loading trucks.

Then he dropped the bomb shell: Neighborhood dumpsters will have to be moved from the alleys to the front. Whoa! They recently went all out to get an ordinance against parking cars in yards. Now they want to put garbage dumpsters in front yards. Let the irony begin.

Rachel Briers, a meteorologist with amazing hands

It's probably not a compliment to say that a TV meteorologist could be a hand model. But Newswest9's Rachel Briers could be a hand model.

A meteorologist has to watch herself on a monitor and move her limbs to coincide with what the viewer sees on the small screen. Watch the opening segment of the movie "Groundhog Day" as Andie McDowell mugs in front of the green screen to see how difficult the job must be.

Anyway, Rachel Briers makes it look effortless as only someone with an athlete's body control could do. Her hands move right along the edge of a cold front with the grace of a ballerina.

It's memorizing. And the weather reporting is good too.

Here's a video compilation that appears to have been made at her previous place of employment. Newswest9 probably saw that and declared her a must-have. Now she's a keeper.

TV commercial -- Duracell and Children's Miracle Hospital -- but why R2D2?

R2D2 is the most innocuous droid on this or any other planet. All he does is deliver messages. Well, I guess the messenger is important -- after all, the telegraph operator was an important part of a cowboy movie, right? However, far, far in the future one might think that a bulky, rolling post-it note wouldn't be the way they did it.

Anyway, the commercial will bring tears to your eyes as a sick kid receives a free toy. It's quite touching even if the toy is an R2D2. Watch it at this Youtube video.

But, the Star Wars theme reminds us there are battles to be fought in space.

Duracell donated a million batteries to Children's Miracle Network Hospitals. Thus the TV ad with the sick child transformed into a Star Warrior complete with movie set, villains, and most important, blaster pistols!

Now, let's not take anything away from Duracell or the hospital network. This is a great thing they did. But the question that comes to the mind of a casual viewer is, "Why did they give the kid a droid?" Any youngster who received a Star Wars toy and an invitation to join the rebellion would prefer a blaster over a droid.

Oh well. We mustn't look a gift droid in the input orifice.

If only Robert Byrd were still alive, he'd clear the air on Jeff Sessions

Robert Byrd was lionized by Democrats. What a shame he is no longer with us, not for anything good he might have done, but to show up Democrats' hypocrisy.

For you see, his resume included the title of Exalted Cyclops for the Ku Klux Klan. But Democrats loved him anyway.

Now we are hearing that Jeff Session made a racist joke about the KKK a few decades ago. Byrd would have laughed at it. What a shame he isn't still alive to highlight Democrat hypocrisy over the subject.

But when it comes to partisan politics, hypocrisy and short memories are what we've come to expect from Democrats.

Why does Obama have to be so divisive?

He wants to be the community organizer he never was. The Reverend Wright was a rebel rousing preacher with a large community following. But Obama was merely a cool black dude with good speech delivery.

Bill Ayers had to be an influence as well. And we can't forget Obama's developmental years under the tutelage of Frank Marshall Davis. Combine all that and the product was a President Obama who is convinced that discontent is a positive force.

Whatever the source of his motivation, we see this: Obama won't call off anti-Trump protesters.

Why does he hate us? The wonder is how in the world did Obama get elected in the first place. It's such a shame that he uses his power to generate divisiveness instead of unity. If only he would just go away once his term ends.

Mansplaining Hotline -- what is your emergency?

Mansplaining Hotline, what is your emergency?

Female Caller: I would like to report a case of mansplaining.

MH: What happened?

FC: He started out interrogating me. He was all, "Why didn't you turn the light off when you left the room?" Then he went, "That light has been on all day."

MH: Go on.

FC: Then he started with the mansplaining: "I work hard to pay the bills around here. And electricity isn't cheap. We don't need to waste it by leaving the lights on all day. We've been over this a million times. Electric lights burn electricity whether you are in the room or not. And when you aren't in the room, you don't need the light. So when you leave the room turn off the G__ D___ lights!"

MH: Uh.

FC: Hell, I knew all that. He didn't need to explain it. That's mansplaining, right? Can you send the cops?

MH: Sorry ma'am, we're a union operation, and you have to be at work before we can help you. What you need is the Skinflint Husband Hotline -- they'll set you up with a good divorce lawyer who'll shake the coins out of that cheap bastard.

In search to besmirch Steve Bannon, Washington Post stumbles on uncomfortable truth about immigration and unemployment for unskilled workers

Alex Pfeiffer found this reporting mishap and relayed it to us it at The Washington Post Thinks Reporting On A Study That Shows Illegals Take Jobs Is Racist.

Steve Bannon is one of the current victims of the left using Saul Alinsky's tactic of freezing, personalizing and polarizing a target. He's been accused of every ism in the book. And according to the above cited article, Washington Post attempted to find evidence that Breitbart news was white-supremist. The articles WaPo found were about immigration studies and seminars that supported the theory that immigration of less educated workers had a negative impact on employment. You can follow the link for more details about those alleged connections to racism.

However, for the final word on uneducated immigrants and their effect on local employment, listen to George Borjas in this C-Span interview. (NOTE: Site requires viewer to accept cookies.)

Borjas took the statistics coming out of the Mariel boatlift to determine what impact that influx of immigrants had on the local population. What he found most significant was the negative impact on the demographic group that most resembled the immigrants, specifically, high-school dropouts. This goes against the conventional wisdom that immigration has such a beneficial impact on an economy that everyone benefits. Wrong. It's merely redistribution.

For an excellent review of Borjas' book, "We Wanted Workers," see The Facts on Immigration.

And to anyone who thinks talking about this is racist, get a life that doesn't revolve around slandering those with whom you disagree.

Would Trump have the courage to bust government employee unions?

That's hard to answer. Die hard Trump supporters will say, "Yes, he does!" But we don't really know.

However, he could have leverage against the federal bureaucracy by threatening to do it. Michael Bargo, Jr., tells us in How Trump Can Defeat the Establishment Bureaucracy that federal employee unions were created by President Kennedy in 1962 with an executive order. And President Trump could revoke it if he wanted to.

Here are some interesting numbers pulled from Mr. Bargo's article:

The SEIU is headquartered in Washington and has 1.9 million members. Since 1989 the SEIU has given $238 million to political candidates, making them the number one political contributor with 100% going to Democrats. The number three biggest contributor is the National Education Association, their 3 million members having given $114 million, 97% going to Democrats. The number four contributor is the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. Their 1.6 million members gave $100 million with 99% going to Democrats. The number nine biggest contributor is the American Federation of Teachers who gave $81 million, 100% going to Democrats. They have 1.6 million members in 3,000 localities nationwide.

These four unions, active throughout the U.S., have a total of 8.1 million active members and since 1989 have given $533 million to political candidates, 98% of which went to Democrats. And this number does not include the other municipal public sector unions, etc. which amount to about 12 million members, giving a total number of public union members of 20.2 million. This is the size of the bureaucratic opposition Trump has in the states and Federal government.  On the Federal level, there are 45,000 Federal employees in Chicago alone. About 28% of all Federal workers are union members.

I suppose the silver lining is that only 28% of federal workers belong to a union. But even then we can be sure that Democrats in Congress will fight tooth and nail to keep the unions as loyal contributors to their own coffers.

Good observation from Ira Stoll -- Republicans will be held responsible for next hike in health insurance premiums

Ira Stoll continues to amaze with his brilliant observations. His latest at NYSun.com, Jonathan Gruber Discovers ‘Stupidity’ Is Wrong Word For American Voters, reminds us how Gruber disparaged ordinary Americans when he called them too stupid to understand the complicated Rube Goldberg contraption he designed called Obamacare.

As Donald Trump and Republicans commence dismantling and replacing the bill, Mr. Stoll makes this astute observation:

If voters are going to start blaming politicians for their health insurance and medical bills, the anger in the next election could be directed at the Republicans who now hold control of the White House and both houses of Congress.

Yeah. They'd better get it right, and in a hurry. Democrats lost the House of Representatives two years after Obama was elected president. Republicans have a window of opportunity. If they're smart, they'll do what they need to do while they have the power.

Lefty rioter groups gets tax exempt status denied to Tea Party

If there are any groups of people in the U.S. who have gotten a raw deal it's the people who tried to organize Tea Party groups.

They tried to get tax exempt status, and it's no secret that in many cases that status was denied or endlessly delayed for what appears to have been political meddling by the IRS. Under most circumstances, that would have been a big NO-NO. But in the Obama administration federal agencies were politicized to the extent no other administration had ever done, at least as far as we know.

And even today we read that two Tea Party groups' applications were denied by the IRS. See IRS denies tea party groups after long wait for decision on tax-exempt status.

Meanwhile, as we watch video of rioting anti-Trump mobs it's useful to remember who is backing them. Blake Montgomery reports that lo and behold, the radical organizer ANSWER Coalition is right in there swinging.

In case you're wondering whether they've got a tax exemption, look no further than their donate page where they helpfully explain the following:

Donations to PUF / ANSWER Coalition are processed by our fiscal sponsor, the Progress Unity Fund, a 501(c)(3) organization.

You may also make a tax-deductible donation by mailing a check made out to Progress Unity Fund / A.N.S.W.E.R. to the following address: ...

(Bold added, address withheld.)

Their tax exempt status should certainly be investigated. And if Donald Trump really intends to drain the swamp he should start with the IRS.

Midland knuckles under for fed street sign mandate

A while back the federal government issued new mandates regarding the signs that identify streets. To most drivers street signs in all caps were not that hard to decode. But of all the things out there capable of distracting a driver, apparently for the government, the upper case lettering of the street names on ordinary corner street signs ranked near the top.

So they came to the rescue. See ALL CAPS? Not OK on road signs, federal government says.

What brings this to our attention today is our own city of Midland, Texas, is heeding the call by replacing the existing signs with code compliant signs.

There was a post at this blog a few years ago complaining about the expense this unnecessary government meddling would require of municipalities. But think of the lives it will save!

See the above street signs for a work in progress. The one in the foreground is the new, street legal sign. The one across the street is the old one in all caps. Let's just hope a lost driver at this intersection looks on the side of the street with the signage in the proper case. It could be a matter of life or death.

Violent protesters rioting against hate -- huh?

So who's deplorable now?

Those of us who participated in the Tea Party rallies recall how peaceful they were. Contrast those rallies with the riots taking place against our next president, Donald Trump.

What's stunning is that they seem focused on hate seemingly oblivious that their own display of hatred exceeds anything we've seen from Trump and his supporters.

The photo came from a CNN post titled What do anti-Trump protesters want? Here are 5 key demands.

It's hatred on display. Whose? The anti-Trump demonstrators. That's what they want: to vent their spleens.

Let's hope Trump's transition goes better than when Bush took over after Clinton

We are hearing how Obama promises a smooth transition of the White House to Trump. Let's hope he means it and expects the same from his staff.

Let's just focus on the actual house for now. The things Bill Clinton, et. ux., Hillary Clinton, did when they left the White House have a way of haunting the memory. It was bad enough to steal government furniture. But the staff went out of their way to make things hard when they pried all the "W"s off each keyboard in the White House. Just childish fun, but someone had to pay for it, and it was us, the taxpayers. But that's the disdain they had for us.

Should we expect antics like that this time? Obama promised a smooth transition. And he wouldn't lie, would he? OK, you can stop laughing now.

Actually, they probably fear that Donald Trump could make them look like the small creatures if they did try some shenanigans.

California legalizes rec marijuana and wants to secede -- are they already high?

It's easy to imagine a group of California Democrats sitting in a circle passing around a marijuana cigarette when one of them pipes up with the idea of California seceding from the United States. "Yeah, man!" "Right on!" "Hey, don't Bogart that joint."

The marijuana referendum passed in California. And that puts them at odds with federal law which still classifies marijuana as an illegal drug. But that's not why some want the state to secede. It's because they don't like the new president elect, Donald Trump. That's not exactly a new phenomenon -- remember that Jesusland map they circulated when George W. Bush was elected.

Secession is a cute idea, but it's an empty threat. If only California would secede. It's doubtful the rest of the nation would miss it, and besides, there's already a stream of immigrants coming out of California now, so many of the red states have California coming to them. Red state residents pray the new folks don't bring their California politics with them.

Californians seem to favor Canada as a country model. But they should probably be looking South. One has to wonder how long it would be before Mexico annexed California. It's doubtful California would put up much of a fight, but it's amusing to imagine an armed invasion while Californians patiently waited for government approval to buy ammo.

Expect calls to do away with the Electoral College -- don't listen to them

It's too soon to get the 2016 vote totals, however some reporters contend that Clinton got more votes than Trump even though he achieved the Electoral College win.

There will be people (Democrats) who will revive the call to do away with the Electoral College and adopt a system whereby the winner of a plurality wins the election.

If the total vote count was all that mattered, presidential candidates would concentrate all their get-out-the-vote efforts on the major metropolitan areas. Voters in the big cities tend toward Democrats for reasons that we won't go into here. But the fact that they do would be bad news for those of us in flyover country without some way of spreading the vote count over a larger area.

The founding fathers knew what they were doing when they put the Electoral College in the Constitution. Let's leave it there.

Where were you when you learned that Donald Trump won?

I was in bed. Woke up around 1:45am cst and turned on the radio to hear a man speaking to a crowd. After a moment it was clear this was a winning Vice Presidential candidate, but which one?

Then a bunch of male voices in the audience chanted "U S A, U S A, U S A." That's not exactly a signature line. But I just couldn't imagine a crowd of Clinton supporters chanting that. Can you?

So Trump won. Make America great again!

BTW, thehill.com has a list of celebrities who claimed they would leave the country if Trump won. Why do they say that? Is it to demonstrate that they have so much emotion invested in the election? BFD. Go ahead. Move. Show us you really mean it. Here's the list at Celebs who said they’d leave country if Trump won.

Did anyone really wait until election day to decide for whom to vote?

This post is being written on the morning of the election after seeing an interview on one of the TV shows. A reporter interviewed patrons of a breakfast diner somewhere in flyover country. At one table of three, only one claimed to have decided for whom to vote. The two others claimed to be undecided.

How can that happen? There really isn't much left to reveal about either of the candidates or, more importantly, what they plan to do if elected. Those guys demonstrated a level of indecisiveness that was truly baffling.

If they need an issue, the Supreme Court is up for grabs. And we all know which candidate will present the most danger to the Constitution as we know it.

Maybe they weren't very comfortable making decisions -- they don't trust their own judgment. They probably need a strong leader at their workplace. And so far neither of the candidates have demonstrated much leadership.

But in reality, they probably have made up their minds, they just don't want to tell anyone. If a fellow says he's voting for Clinton, his conservative friends will think he's stupid. If he says he's voting for Trump, his Democrat friends might try to get him fired or ruin his business. He has a right to remain silent. Anything he says can and might be used as an excuse to do him harm.

Who is stealing the Trump yard signs in Midland Texas?

Observant commuters saw something different on their route Monday morning. Where there were Trump yard signs last week, now nothing.

Some miscreants with low level ambition -- whether drug or alcohol induced -- had an idea. But creativity was lacking*. All they could come up with was stealing Trump/Pence signs. It's as if they thought that people with jobs driving to work without seeing Trump signs would be inspired to vote for Hillary Clinton. Poor creatures. There are your deplorables, Hillary.

But to be fair, even Shepard Fairey is uninspired by Hillary Clinton.

*For more creative misbehavior, see the Sabo's imaginative graffiti.

Candidates spend millions on psychological data on voters so they know all about us

Barack Obama put the Big Data idea in the news after his win in 2012. The prospect of data banks full of information about the voters which could be used to get the right voters to the polls was stunning at the time. It's old news now.

And any politician who can afford it has invested in it. Donald Trump can and does. See Trump’s plan for a comeback includes building a ‘psychographic’ profile of every voter. Excerpt:

The firm says it can predict how most people will vote by using up to 5,000 pieces of data about every American adult, combined with the result of hundreds of thousands of personality and behavioral surveys, to identify millions of voters who are most open to being persuaded to support Trump.

Very impressive, if it works. See also Behind the scenes at Donald Trump's UK digital war room. To wit:

"The traditional model where 50 million people receive the same blanket advert is being replaced by extremely individualistic targeting.

"So we're able to identify clusters of people who care about a particular issue, pro-life or gun rights, and to then create an advert on that issue, and we can nuance the messaging of that advert according to how people see the world, according to their personalities."

Cambridge Analytica's method relies on machine learning. It starts with a detailed survey, often presented as a psychological test.

The tech company creates these and seeds them on Facebook, where they are filled in by hundreds of thousands of people.

Those answers are combined with data, bought or licensed from brokers and sourced from social media, to create models of their personality. Those models are then applied at a population-level scale.

Mr Nix said: "Each one of these data points on its own is not that revealing, but the sum of them begins to paint a fairly comprehensive picture.

"So we model the personality of every adult across the United States, some 230 million people."

The technology then identifies key voter types, who receive tailored messages - including Facebook and banner adverts.

Unlike traditional media, hypertargeted online and social messaging is not well regulated. Some researchers are concerned about privacy issues, as well as the effect of highly individualised messages on political discourse.

The company pulling all this together is Cambridge Analytica, and if Americans weren't eager enough about sharing their personal psychology online already, the company helpfully offers their psychological survey at its website. Go ahead. Take their Personality Quiz and get in their data base, if you aren't already in it. A sneaky voter might throw in some false information so he might be able to detect why a particular message happens to come his way.

Hillary Clinton should steal Gerald Daugherty's campaign commercial

If you haven't seen Gerald Daugherty's campaign commercial for Travis County Commissioner watch it at this Youtube video.

It purports to show his exasperated spouse pleading with voters to reelect her husband because he's driving everyone crazy around the house droning on and on with minutia from the office. It's a clever ad.

Here's what Team Hillary* should do. Steal the idea.

Imagine the scene. Bill Clinton is whiling away his time reading magazines, and Hillary is in the background screaming like a banshee, laughing hideously, then coughing uncontrollably. Close up on Bill and we see he's wearing ear plugs. Scene change. They are in the back yard while the chef cooks them some bar-b-q. Hillary grabs a fork, spears a steak, and throws it at Bill. He ducks, and it hits a secret service agent.

Bill Clinton looks into the camera and pleads, "Put Hillary in the White House. Please." End ad with boilerplate language.

*On the other hand, instead of Team Hillary, maybe an anti-Clinton PAC should produce the ad.

A bombastic, blowhard, billionaire versus a greedy, corrupt, multimillionaire -- Guess which one the Occupy Wall Street crowd supports

Remember Occupy Wall Street? All those idealistic Democrats were out there demonstrating their disgust with Wall Street. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton was pulling in big bucks from speaking engagements to the biggest Wall Street investment bankers, brokers, and financiers.

Now those happy campers from Occupy Wall Street are proudly displaying their "I'm for Hillary" badges.

Are they forgiving, or are they forgetful? In either case it's all partisan politics.

 

Trump's refusal to release tax returns is very important, at least to the NPR audience

I was listening to liberal talk radio (NPR) Friday morning, and the host and a guest were appalled at the fact that Donald Trump is the only presidential candidate in modern history who didn't release his tax returns. Is that really an issue?

I would have liked to ask them, "If Trump released his tax returns, would you then vote for him?" HA HA! We know they wouldn't. It would be merely the first of many steps he would have to take for them to accept him as a human being.

But with all that has and is coming out about Hillary Clinton, it's interesting to hear just what arguments they use these days to try to drag down Trump. To get him down to her level is going to take some doing.

Furthermore, it's hard to imagine anything in his tax returns that would embarrass him. If so, it would have leaked already.

Anyway, let them have their fun. We'll know soon enough who will be our next president.

Dumb deplorables have better idea on health care insurance

The infamous Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber was on the TV recently boasting that Obamacare was a success because it accomplished two things: One, many people who were uninsurable prior to passage of the bill are now insured; and two, Obamacare prevented cancellation of insurance because of illness.

Well, excuse me for being such a dumb deplorable. But if that's all you wanted to accomplish, you didn't have to upend the entire health care industry and insurance therefor. It seems like you could have simply addressed those two problems and come up with laws accomplishing what you wanted to do without out all the fuss.

Currently, Obamacare is a failure. But the Big Government wing of the governing establishment wants full government control -- a single payer system with the power centralized in a command and control committee. Whatever they choose to call it, it sounds a lot like socialism.

Obamacare should be repealed and replaced with a simple law that will accomplish those two objectives without turning the whole industry upside with the leftist vision of utopia.

Don't believe that empty threat that 35% of federal workers will quit if Trump is elected

You'd have to put a gun to their heads to get them to quit. And even then they'd say, "I'm thinking. I'm thinking." (Hat tip to Jack Benny.)

Investors.com shared some logical insight, to wit:

Whatever Trump's many flaws, that's an awfully tempting reason to cast a ballot for him. Except for the fact that these workers will almost certainly decide to keep their jobs no matter who wins, if for no other reason than most of them would probably find jobs in the private sector utterly intolerable.

As Dr. Stantz put it in "Ghostbusters," "You don't know what it's like out there! I've worked in the private sector. They expect results!"

Federal workers get paid more than they would make in the private sector. They work less. There's low expectation for them. And it's extremely difficult to fire them.

Besides, if they found a way to sabotage President Trump it would be too tempting to resist. Ask Lois Lerner for pointers.