...and Happy New Year 2021 (Year of the Jackalope).
This is the obligatory Happy New Year post. It's about 10:00 PM EST on December 31st, 2020, and the neighbors are warming up for the main event. So far we've got sporadic fireworks, but at midnight it's going to sound like some kind of Iwo Jima got started. The smart money stays under hard cover, and I do mean hard.
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| The Best Laid Plans - Of Politicos and Equestrians |
I have never willingly jumped a horse over a fence, or any other obstacle. The way I see it, land owners have better things to do than to build a fence just to decorate a pasture. Whatever's on the other side can stay there, unmolested by me and the skittish horse under me. Let the others venture to jump something they can easily ride around, and they'll risk the ignominious end as illustrated above.
How about a few high points of 2020? Here's one, selected on purpose.
I never, ever, thought I'd live to see an illegitimate presidential election in the United States. The fact is that all elections (Federal, State, and Local) are imperfect. The candidates all know that going in, even if most of the citizens do not. I'm betting most of the citizens don't know, but that's just my own opinion. This year the presidential election was so completely fraudulent that even the perpetrators can see it without taking off their blindfolds. The problem is that fixing the election process can only be done by the winners - the losers being temporarily out of a job. So it's not going to be fixed anytime soon. Not that fixing the process would be easy.
I suppose we the people could begin by issuing federal identification cards, complete with self-identifying data on a chip. It's not perfect, but it's a beginning, and if nothing else we can now get an accurate count on the number of people who actually get off their lazy asses and vote, and at the same time eliminate illegal voters.
The there's the booming economy, the historically low unemployment rate, the U.S. withdrawal from the NAFTA train wreck that we inherited from Slick Willie and which was enthusiastically supported by the Ayatollah Obongo, the lifting of nonsensical regulations on industry... all demolished by an outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), AKA COVID-19, the Wuhan Blues, Chinkytown Pox, or whatever. We'll never get around to thanking China for this mess in a fashion that they would truly understand, which is a shame.
Our national debt is $27 Trillion and rising. I can't imagine just how much money $27 T is, but the number involves twelve zeros: 1,000,000,000,000 is One Trillion. So, $27,000,000,000,000 dead presidents in hock. News flash - the White House is underwater.
I'm not worried about paying this back or getting it whittled down to a reasonable number. That's not going to happen. What I'm worried about is bankruptcy. Anyone who thinks that we the people are on the verge of some kind of revolutionary war, civil insurrection, or outbreak of violent protest... scratch that last, but anyone else - just wait for bankruptcy. Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security - gone. Just gone, never to return. People who have never in their life experienced hunger will get a first hand look at daily life in Zimbabwe. Citizens who have never had to fear the police will get an up close and very personal look at generation two of the Tonton Macoute. Indoor people, who have never been more than fifty yards from a flush toilet in their entire lives, will find themselves in a permanent parking lot that used to be Interstate 75. Now what?
I'm not looking forward to 2021. I'm old. I'm also fat and ugly, but I can make that work for me. Experience has taught me that more often than not, things get worse instead of better. Improvement comes in very tiny increments, dispensed at roughly the same speed a glacier moves. Whereas disaster - well, just give me a month or two, then we'll see.
So here's to 2020:
Give it a few more hours and 2020 will be history.
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