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Some more humor

I was shocked when my mother voted for Kamala

She never would have done that when she was alive.

If a democrat wins, I’m leaving,

If a republican wins, I’m also leaving.
This has nothing to do with politics.
I just really want to travel.

The problem with Trump jokes

Republicans don’t think they’re funny, and democrats don’t think they’re jokes.

Why did the democrats lose the election?

They were Biden their time

The worst problem at the congressional baseball game is 

All the republicans are in right field

If there weren’t any democrats…

Then who would be left?

How can NASCAR racers be republicans

if all they do is go left?

Why was Trump impeached twice?

He wanted to prove that anything a Democrat can do, he can do better and in half the time.

Why did the democrat walk into a bar?

Because Kamala Harris set it so low.

How do politicians keep their breath fresh? 

With Entitle-mints.

What did the Trump say to China? 

We are going to build a Great Firewall and make your hackers pay for it.

What do you call Al Gore’s drumming? 

An algorithm.

What do you call a basement full of liberals? 

A whine cellar.

What is a democratic free market? 

One that hands out slices of cheese

Why did God create democrats? 

In order to make used car salesmen look good.

What the difference between a liberal and the rear end of a horse? 

I don’t know.

Who said that democrats have no standards?

In fact, they have double standards.

I hope Elon Musk never gets involved in a scandal

Elongate would be really drawn out.

According to my calculations, about 40% of Americans are republicans

But that’s just a conservative estimate

How do you hide money from a republican?

Put it in an LGBTQ textbook.

Elon Musk’s plan for Mars colonization will include only republicans.

Well it is the red planet.

How many democrats does it take to fix a problem?

No one knows. It’s never happened.

I was trying to think of past republicans similar to Marjorie Taylor Greene

But they just Palin comparison.

What’s the difference between Elon Musk and God?

God doesn’t think he’s Elon Musk.

What did the republicans do when Obama won the election 2 times in a row?

They pulled out their Trump card

Some republican and a few socialists live in the same building. One day there is a fire, but only the socialists die. Why? 

Everyone else was at work.

The only reason the democrats haven’t risen up and overthrown the government 

The republicans are the ones with the guns.

Why were democrats in the early lead on election day?

The republicans weren’t off of work yet.

Elon Musk is originally from South Africa, which is strange

You’d think he was from mad-at-gas-car.

Elon Musk, Tiger Woods, the Pope and a college student are on an airplane …

The plane is going down, the pilots bailed, it’s going to crash. 
there’s 4 of them and only 3 parachutes …
Tiger Woods says “I’m the greatest golfer in history, I should get a parachute.”
Everyone agrees, Tiger takes a parachute and jumps out of the plane. 
Elon Musk says “I’m the smartest man in the world, I should get a parachute.”
Everyone agrees, Musk jumps out of the plane. 
The pope tells the college student “My son, take this last parachute and live a long happy life.”
The college student says “We can both go. the smartest man just jumped out with my backpack.”

Before Elon Musk started Tesla

… he was plain old Lon Musk

President Trump was told there were at least 12 Brazilians in the migrant caravan headed to the Southern border…

He turned to his Treasury Secretary and said: “how much is a brazillion?”

Some people are skeptical of migrants because they think they don’t embrace their new country’s culture

But I teach calculus to international students at my local university and they all integrate really well.

Some illegals from Siberia decided to come into Canada and hired a boat to take them but the captain seemed to have gotten lost. Nervously one of them asked him “Are you alright?” He said “Yeah, I just need to get my Bering Strait.”

I was at the mall and saw a boy selling week old “Democrat Puppies” in the parking lot. A week later the boy was back in the parking lot selling “Republican Puppies”. I asked him what happened?  He said “they opened their eyes.”

Defund the UN

Speaking of waste and fraud, why doesn’t Trump defund the UN? It is contrary to everything Trump espouses yet he nominated Elise Stefanik, the representative from New York who was one of his staunchest backers, to be UN ambassador. What a strange way to show his gratitude. What an awful job. Why would she want to sit in a room full of pompous diplomats who hate America and are antisemitic and listen to babbling nonsense? Virtually every UN organization incorporates climate change and gender issues including transgenderism as part of their work. If Trump is defunding these activities in the states, then why send the UN $22 billion to advance this agenda internationally? And I thought Stefanik was smart.

The Wall Street Journal reported that “The International Organization for Migration lists as among its central areas of activity “gender equality,” “environmental sustainability” and “reducing global inequalities.” It sponsors programs like “Strengthening Women’s Resilience in the Face of Climate Change in El Salvador.” The U.N. Commission on Human Rights promotes a variety of transgender propaganda campaigns, such as helping Nepalese “LGBTIQ+ writers to tell their own story.”  Nepalese LBGTQ writers? Who knew?

Recall that press secretary Katherine Levitt said regarding the expenditures at USAID that she did not want her tax dollars going to that crap? What about the funding of this UN crap? What about diversity, equity and inclusion being at the heart of UNFPA’s workforce?  What about funding job training for gays and lesbians in Brazil? What about funding “Being LGBT in the Caribbean?” Where is DOGE on all of this? What does Stefanik think about this “crap”?

In 2023, Mike Lee (R-UT) and Chip Roy (R-TX) introduced bills not only to defund the UN but to leave it as well. Lee said “No more blank checks for the United Nations. Americans’ hard-earned dollars have been funneled into initiatives that fly in the face of our values – enabling tyrants, betraying allies, and spreading bigotry,” Roy said “This year, the United Nations’ corruption, and its despicable, brazen political agenda have been on full display. From UNRWA actively protecting Hamas and acting against our ally Israel, delayed condemning Hamas, to China being elected to the “Human Rights Council,” to the propagation of climate hysteria, covering for China’s forced abortion and sterilization programs, the UN’s decades-old, internal rot once again raises the questions of why the United States is even still a member or why we’re wasting billions — indeed, $12.5 billion in 2021 — every year on it. The UN doesn’t deserve one single dime of American taxpayer money or one bit of our support; we should defund it and leave immediately.”

What is Trump’s reaction? Well on February 4, he issued the following executive order.

Within 180 days of the date of this order, the Secretary, in consultation with the UN Ambassador, shall conduct a review of all international intergovernmental organizations of which the United States is a member and provides any type of funding or other support, and all conventions and treaties to which the United States is a party, to determine which organizations, conventions, and treaties are contrary to the interests of the United States and whether such organizations, conventions, or treaties can be reformed.  Upon the conclusion of that review, the Secretary shall report the findings to the President, through the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs and provide recommendations as to whether the United States should withdraw from any such organizations, conventions, or treaties. 

So why send Stefanik over to the UN when she is much more valuable in the House? Why not send Steve Bannon instead? That would really shake things up. Then go ahead and get out of the UN. It is a useless organization. Fund those activities that do not conflict with this country’s priorities and goals out of the State Department. Evict them from New York. They belong in Brussels anyway.

A Fake Constitutional Crisis

The democrats and their sycophants in the media are screaming “constitutional crisis!” Being Trump haters and the guardians of unlimited government spending they are whining about Trump and DOGE. Andy Kim (D-NJ) “We are at a point where we are basically on the cusp of a constitutional crisis.” Chris Murphy, D-Conn. “The president and his allies’ moves represent “illegal seizures of power” that have thrown the U.S. into a constitutional crisis.” Angus King (I-ME) “We are in the middle of the biggest Constitutional crisis our nation has ever seen & every day we’re inching further from the democracy our founders created.” Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) “We’ve got our toes right on the edge of a constitutional crisis here. Only John Fetterman (D-PA) seems to have kept his cool saying that the courts will decide what is or isn’t constitutional, “There isn’t a constitutional crisis, and all of these things ― it’s just a lot of noise.” Who would have thought that Fetterman would continue to be the only democrat who makes sense rather than nonsense?

What about the media? NPR – which Trump should defund – says “It’s clear President Trump has gone beyond the powers of the executive branch.” But then says “At this moment, the executive branch has not taken the position that it can violate court orders or that it does not need to comply with court orders. So as long as we remain in a system in which the executive follows, or at least states that it has to follow what a court says, I have hope that the system will hold.” Doesn’t sound like a constitutional crisis to me. The Atlantic screams “The Constitutional Crisis Is Here! If Congress won’t stop Donald Trump and Elon Musk from arrogating its power over federal spending, who will? 

Hum. Did NPR and the Atlantic think that Joe Biden’s actions constituted a constitutional crisis? Didn’t Biden ignore court orders, including that of the Supreme Court in his efforts to forgive student debt? The courts said that it was unconstitutional. Biden ignored the ruling and bragged “The Supreme Court blocked it. But that didn’t stop me.” Sounds like a constitutional crisis to me that the left chose to ignore. Hey republicans, why wasn’t this an impeachable offense? Did we have a constitutional crisis when Biden proclaimed that the constitution had been amended – unbeknownst to us all – to include the Equal Rights amendment? No, because we all knew that Biden was an addled delusional old fool.

The left only screams “constitutional crisis” when they are not the ones violating it or advocating an overthrow of it. The left routinely ignores the second amendment and hates the Electoral College. Doesn’t the left always proclaim that the constitution is flawed and needs to be rewritten? How is it that all of a sudden they have embraced the sanctity of a document written by a bunch of slave holding old white men? Isn’t it amazing what Donald Trump can do?

So far Trump is facing over 70 lawsuits. He has won some and lost some. On those that he has lost, he said he will appeal. To date there has been no indication that he will ignore the courts like Biden did. What Trump is doing is trying to exert control over the entire executive branch of the government. So is that unconstitutional?

Perhaps the democrats are confused over our form of government and to what constitutes the executive branch. Primer: the federal government consists of three branches: the executive branch, the legislative branch and the judicial branch. The executive branch includes the president’s cabinet and a myriad of federal agencies such as the SEC, the FCC, CFPB, FAA, FTC, USAID and a host of others including the financial regulatory agencies the OCC, NCUA, FDIC and the FED. All agencies whose leaders are appointed by the president and confirmed by the senate are within the executive branch. 

Trump says that he has the authority to fire the boards and leaders of these agencies since he has authority over the executive branch. He also asserts that he can have control over their spending even though some budgets are appropriated by the Congress and others come from the charging of assessments. Trump argues that these agencies are not “independent”. His argument is that insulation from presidential authority runs counter to Article II of the Constitution. The President should be able to supervise how they do their job. Trump says these agencies have become unaccountable for their actions and should be reined in. These agencies have exceeded their constitutional authority. 

The Wall Street Journal, often a Trump adversary, is on Trump’s side. It says “The Federal Trade Commission and Justice Department both enforce antitrust and consumer protection laws. But the Attorney General answers to the President, while the FTC Chair doesn’t. This makes no logicalgoverning sense.”

So the issue is who holds the independent agencies accountable for their actions. If they are part of the legislative branch then it would be the congress. However, they are part of the executive branch. Shouldn’t the responsibility then fall to the president? The constitutional crisis may well be the lack of accountability of these agencies. I think Trump wants to have a clear ruling from the Supreme Court on the independence of these agencies and their oversight. 

Again the Wall Street Journal says “The president ordered agency heads to scour every regulation and bit of guidance under their remit and make lists of those that violate the constitution, exceed legislative power, go beyond the clear words of a statute or harm the national interest. The White House is laying the groundwork to declare hundreds of rules null and void on grounds that they weren’t lawful in the first place. Will it get sued? Yes, and the White House knows it. The clear hope is to build on recent Supreme Court rulings that rein in the bureaucratic state.”  Suits? Trump says “bring it on.”

Constitutional crisis? More like constitutional cleanup. It will be interesting to see what the courts have to say about agency independence and about impoundment when the White House decides not to spend monies appropriated by the congress. That should prove interesting.

Volodymyr the First. Is Trump jealous?

Donald Trump clearly dislikes Volodymyr Zelenskyy. It probably stems from Trump accusing Zelenskyy of taking sides during the campaign. Recall that Zelenskyy on a visit to the UN met with Harris and not with Trump. Trump said that Zelenskyy wanted Harris to win in order to “keep the money flowing.” He said “Every time Zelenskyy comes to the United States, he walks away with $100 billion. I think he’s the greatest salesman on Earth. But we’re stuck in that war unless I’m president.” Zelenskyy then criticized JD Vance for his views on Ukraine and was flown to Pennsylvania in an Air Force C-17 to tour an ammunition plant with Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro. Zelenskyy was accused of trying to influence the election. One critic said “Zelensky is also attacking JD Vance in the biggest, most important battleground state in the country during an election year. If that isn’t foreign election interference I don’t know what is.” Another opined “Zelensky is openly campaigning for Democrats in battleground Pennsylvania today some 50 days out from our Presidential election. Unreal.” 

Trump was infuriated. So his actions toward Zelenskyy are no surprise. Calling him a dictator is relatively mind – for Donald Trump. But the media immediately defended Zelenskyy giving further evidence that it suffers from Trump Derangement Syndrome. The media’s reflex response was “If Trump thinks he’s a dictator then he is not.” Trump had said that Zelenskyy’s term in office had expired but that he suspended elections declaring martial law which made him a dictator. The media said “No he isn’t because Ukrainian law prohibits elections during periods of martial law”. 

The headlines blared that Trump was falsely accusing Zelenskyy of being a dictator. All the European leaders immediately came to Zelenskyy’s aid saying that he was not a dictator. Googled it and there is page after page accusing Trump of making a false accusation. Some even compared Zelenskyy to Winston Churchill and Abraham Lincoln. The British parliament suspended general elections from 1935 to 1945 allowing Churchill to serve from 1940 to 1945 without the benefit of elections. Interestingly, when elections were held two months after VE day, Churchill lost. Lincoln never suspended elections but did suspend habeas corpus to rein in confederate sympathizers in Maryland in 1863 after both the House and the Senate passed bills giving Lincoln the right to do so. Lincoln proclaimed “Whereas the Constitution of the United States has ordained that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended unless when, in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require it.”

I am convinced that if Trump had lauded Zelenskyy as a wonderful fellow who was saving the world from being ravished by the evil Putin and having a wonderful relationship with his subjects, that the media would have immediately branded Zelenskyy as a dictator. Note that none of the media denials went any further than the dictator part. I guess the media does not want the public to know that Zelenskyy has banned eleven political parties asserting that they are sympathetic to Russia. He expelled members of the Ukrainian parliament and revoked their citizenship over claims that they were sympathetic to Russia. Zelenskyy banned the Russian Orthodox Church which is the largest church in the Ukraine claiming the church was a threat to national security and its priests were Russian spies. He has also frozen the assets of his predecessor Petro Poroshenko who was deposed in part due to his relationship with Putin. Zelenskyy has also censored free speech and sought to control the Ukrainian media. He consolidated television programming into a single state controlled outlet. Ukrainian journalists claim that they have been threatened and are under government surveillance if they do not parrot the official government line.

Our media ignores these actions. Rather they are more interested in refuting anything that Trump says or tweets. Trump said that Zelenskyy had poor approval ratings, had started the war and had gotten millions of Ukrainians killed. The media said “No!” His approval rating is 57% not the 4 percent cited by Trump, that Russia started the war and that Ukrainian casualties are around 80,000 killed and 400,000 wounded not millions. So Trump is lying and he must be lying about the dictator thing too. This is sloppy journalism at best and assumes that the public is too lazy to find out the truth. Trump is smart. He knows that by proclaiming Zelenskyy as a dictator, that the press will take the opposite stance. Since the press is always reporting the democrat claim that Trump wants to be a dictator, Trump knows that it can’t show parallels between him and Zelensky.

So is Zelenskyy a dictator? Do the above actions of censoring the press, banning the largest church in the country, expelling members of parliament, freezing the assets of the opposition, limiting the news, banning political parties and threatening journalists, are those of a dictator? They are indeed. However, even I understand that those actions may be deemed as justified during a time of war. But it still does not negate the old saying that if it looks like a duck, waddles like a duck and quacks like a duck then odds are that it is a duck.

Democrats unhinged

Here are just some of the choice comments made by democrats ranting about Elon Musk.

Chuck Schumer (D-NY)

“An unelected shadow government is conducting a hostile takeover of the federal government.DOGE is not a real government agency. DOGE has no authority to make spending decisions. DOGE has no authority to shut programs down or to ignore federal law. DOGE’s conduct cannot be allowed to stand. Congress must take action to restore the rule of law.

Hey Chuck, If this is true then won’t the courts shut them down? You certainly have enough lawsuits going.

Maxine Waters (D-CA)

“We have got to tell Elon Musk that nobody elected your ass. Nobody told you you could get all of our private information. Nobody told you you could be in charge of the payments of this country”.

“We have told you that you’ve made enough money off our government yourself, and now you want to take everybody else’s payroll and make sure that they don’t make the kind of money that you’ve made. Oh, you want to use our money to go to Mars.”

“We’re in a crisis in this country because Trump and Elon Musk and the billionaires have decided they’re going to put us all in our place. They’re going to run this country. They’re going to make sure that they take over everything”.

“Are we going to let them do that? Are we going to let them run this government in the way that they can make even more money and so they won’t stop? It is so brazen every day they’re taking new actions. They’re taking executive actions. Every day they’re doing something,”

BTW, Waters, a millionaire herself, must have ignored the influence wielded by democrat billionaires over the past four years. Forbes reported that 83 billionaires supported democrats in the last election while 52 backed Trump.  Laurene Powell Jobs, Bill Gates, Jonathan Gray, Marc Benioff, Mark Cuban, George and Alex Soros, Reid Hoffman, Crystal Sacca, Jamie Dimon, David Geffen, Jennifer Pritzker, Barry Diller, Stanley and Karen Hubbard, William and John Fisher, Tom Steyer, Craig Newmark, Steven Rales, David Hall, Gordon Getty, George Lucas, Dean Metropoulos, Steven Spielberg, Eric Schmidt, William Ackman, Andres Santo Domingo, Christy Walton, Eli Broad, Jim Simons, Mark Zuckerberg, Michael Bloomberg and David Bonderman are just some of those who we know about. I didn’t hear Mad Max railing about these billionaires. I guess they were just supporting Kamala out of the goodness of their hearts and had no influence whatsoever on Biden and his policies.

Squad Member Ayanna Pressley (D-MA)

“Elon Musk is a Nazi nepo baby, a godless lawless billionaire, who no one elected. Elon, this is the American people. This is not your trashy Cybertruck that you can just dismantle, pick apart, and sell the pieces of. We will see you in the court, in Congress, in the streets.”

Nazi nepo baby? A godless lawless billionaire? Well no one is perfect. I admit the Cybertruck is a bit weird. I don’t think that it is street legal in Europe or China. I have counted four in my neighborhood environs along with two Hummer EVs. They are huge but so is my extended cab, extended bed, diesel F-250.  Is Elon going to make a mini-cyber for Europe and China?

Squad Member Jasmine Crockett (D-TX)

“We are gonna be in your face, we are gonna be on your ass, and we are going to make sure you understand what democracy looks like, and this ain’t it.”

Maxine. Jasmine. What’s this fixation with Musk’s rear end?

Squad Member Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-NJ)

“God damn it shut down the Senate!”  “We will not take this. We will fight back!” “Anytime a person can pay $250 million into a campaign, and they be given full access to the Department of the Treasury of the United States of America, we are at war!”

War? LaMonica? I wonder if her parents read my blog about turning “white” names into “black” ones by adding “La” to them? Didn’t Bill Gates give the Harris campaign $50 million? Didn’t Michael Bloomberg give $47 billion? BTW LaMonica, surely Joe Biden and Kamala Harris weren’t running the last government. George and Alex Soros anyone?

Squad Member Summer Lee (D-PA)

“I don’t believe that we can afford to mince many words. President Trump is conducting an illegal and dangerous power grab, to call it what it is. Elon Musk is stealing from you, the American people, your jobs, your benefits, your data.”

I guess the EPA, the FBI, the IRS, DOJ and the CFPB were not conducting dangerous power grabs over the last four years. The courts will tell us whether what Musk is doing is illegal.

Squad Member Ilhan Omar (D-MN)

“So let me get this straight, he wants contracts for cancer research cancelled but says let’s keep contracts for his company SpaceX to do research. Greedy billionaire trying to ripoff the American people pretending to be altruistic is all I see.”

 Omar is referring to the freeze put on HHS funding initiatives until Robert Kennedy, Jr and his team could review them. That meant long-standing meetings designed to allocate grant money to medical research were canceled without indication they would be rescheduled. One of those meetings concerned cancer research.

Squad Member Rashida Tlaib (D-MI)

“The American people feel very much we’re in a constitutional crisis. They cannot understand, you know, this billionaire. … And to think that he can just walk in, to an agency that I can tell you, for many of my families, from Social Security, Medicare, I mean, it is literally part of how they survive in our country.”

Seems like they are all reading from the same playbook. I want them to take a poll in Tlaib’s district to see how many there think we are in a “constitutional crisis.” Did she think we were in a constitutional crisis when Biden ignored the law and ignored the courts with his actions on illegals and on student debt?

Greg Casar (D-TX), Head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus

“Five inspector generals that were looking into Elon Musk’s companies were fired by the Trump-Musk administration. These inspector generals, who are independent, protected by law, they are the people that find the waste, fraud, and abuse, and found many of the cases of waste, fraud and abuse that have been brought up today — fired because they were looking into Elon Musk. You know what Elon Musk doesn’t seem to be looking into? His own contracts. …  Just last year, Elon Musk was promised $3 billion from close to 100 contracts with the federal government.” 

Greg, If the IGs were doing their job there would be no need for DOGE. But of course, there is no government waste and fraud, right?

Robert Garcia (D-CA)

 “What the American public wants is for us to bring actual weapons to this bar fight. This is an actual fight for democracy.”

Is this a threat? Obviously not since Garcia later said “No reasonable person would view my comments as a threat.” Well what about all those crazy unreasonable people out there, Robert?

Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-N.M.) 

“While we’re sitting here and Donald Trump and Elon Musk are recklessly and illegally dismantling the federal government, shuttering federal agencies, firing federal workers, withholding funds vital to the safety and well-being of our communities and hacking our sensitive data systems.” 

Thanks Melanie. For a while it looked like only minorities were anti-Musk. But of course you did minor in American Indian studies.

Squad Member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY)

“This dude is probably one of the most unintelligent billionaires I have ever met or seen or witnessed,”

“This dude is not smart, and the danger in the lack of intelligence and the lack of expertise that Elon has, I mean, this guy is one of the most morally vacant but also just least knowledgeable about these systems that we know of,”

“They don’t do their homework, clearly. Like, they’re putting 19-year-olds in at the Treasury.”

“What Donald Trump has done is that he has completely given up his power and handed a lot of it over to Elon Musk. Elon Musk has appointed some teenagers and some people in their early 20s into essentially trying to raid government systems.”

“I’m not rocking with anybody sympathetic to Nazis”

Hold it! AOC who is not the most erudite person in Congress called Musk dumb? The founder of Tesla and Space X dumb? Did you get rid of your dumb Tesla? Did you see how dumb Musk’s dumb Space X caught that dumb rocket booster descending back to the dumb launch pad at Boca Chica, Texas? What a dumb thing to say.

What is interesting to me is that 82 percent of democrats say that reducing government waste and fraud is important but only 28 percent approve of Musk and DOGE. What I want to hear is how democrats would eliminate waste and fraud because all I hear is caterwauling over Musk. So dems, what would you do? Silence.

Lemme see, 5% of $10,000 is 200, right?

I am back in the classroom after 13 years. I was worried about the cultural divide. I cannot relate to these students and they cannot relate to me. None had been born when Bill Clinton was president. Most were in the second grade when I retired. I am older than their grandparents. My children are older than their parents. My grandchildren are all older than any of them. Tic Tok is one of those windup clocks. I am on no social media sites. I tried to get on X after Elon Musk acquired Twitter, but X rejects any effort I make to create an account and I am not smart enough to figure out why. I must be a Luddite since I can’t even figure out how to use the technology in the classroom. Its almost embarrassing.

I gave a lecture on financial markets. As is my wont I told about the origins of the US stock market and why it was initially denominated in 8ths. I talked about the Spanish dollar divided into 8 reales and that the coin dominated the American colonies even after the US decided to mint its own currencies dominated in 100ths after 1792. In the colonies the Spanish pieces of 8 was divided into bits rather than reales. Remember 2 bits, 4 bits, six bits a dollar, all for UT stand up and holler?

For me this was fun. Not so much for the students who were wondering if they had wandered into the wrong class. Isn’t this a finance class and not a history class? Who really cares why the stock market is denominated in 100ths while the bond market remains denominated in 8ths? I even showed them the narrower margins in the stock market because of this (one penny versus 12.5 cents). The students yawned. Then I said remember in Treasure Island, Long John Silver’s parrot kept barking “Pieces of 8! Pieces of 8!”? The students probably thought that Long John Silver was some fish-selling dude.

I gave them an exam. It was short answer, one problem and three essays. Students had to answer in the spaces provided on the exam and could not use their computers. They complained. They wanted to answer using their laptops. I told them that the computer could not monitor them if they answered on it. They complained that in their four years they had only been tested with multiple choice/true false exams on the computer. Well during my four years at Georgia I only had one multiple choice exam and I refused to take it. So my making them write out their answers was unfair. I also would not let them use a calculator. I told them that they could do the computations in their head and if they used a calculator it meant that they did not understand the concept. The problem involved them being able to compute 5% of $10,000. Over half of them could not do it. When I went over the exam in class, I had to ask ten students what the answer was before one said $500. Again a student complained that the question was unfair and I should have given them the answer because it compared the coupon rate on a bond to its yield to find out if the bond sold at a discount, par or a premium.

I also take off for misspelled words. On the syllabus I toldl the students that I have a zero tolerance for misspelling principal, yield, receive, guarantee and separate. So of course they wrote principle, yeild, recieve, garantee and seperate. Several students also misspelled “usury” even though I spelled it correctly in the question.

These students are passive. I have not been interrupted a single time by students asking questions or for a clarification. Not once! I was talking about Fed policy and changing the fed funds rate by 50 basis points when I realized that some of them didn’t know what a basis point was – and these are finance majors. So I asked “What’s a basis point?” I said that I had wasted the last 30 minutes because they did not know what I was talking about. When I now see a student with dazed eyes I say “Ask me a question.” When they said that they don’t have one, I say “Then make one up.”

These students have had basic economics, introductory finance, financial statements and investments. Yet they cannot draw a supply and demand diagram. They haven’t even heard of net present value. When I asked them about how the market allocates credit, they had no idea. When I introduce a subject I ask them a basic question. Define “interest rates”. They can’t do it. I ask them “Is the minimum wage good or bad.” They say “good” and then I show them it can be both and can create unemployment among those the politicians want to help. I do the same with usury laws. I asked them who holds the most US debt. They all said China. Of course the answer is the Fed and the US government. Even Japan holds more US debt than China. I guess I need to put my lectures on Tik Tok.

Don’t get me wrong. There are some very strong students in this class. Most are smarter than they show. Its that they have not been trained to use their brains and to think how to solve problems. Case in point was a question on the Fed’s Open Market Committee. I said that if inflation were forecast, what actions would the FOMC take to counter it. Half the class said the Fed would buy T-bills and lower interest rates! When I went over the test I asked a student who got it wrong, “If the Fed wanted to slow down the economy, what would happen to interest rates.” He knew that the Fed would raise interest rates. So why did he get the answer to the exam wrong? It was obviously my fault in how I asked the question.

When the semester began I said that I did not want to be the only person in the class having fun. I am actually enjoying being back in the classroom but the student reaction is definitely bimodal. This is messing up my turkey season and I cannot spend a solid week at the farm until spring break. But this is a one off. Seven students dropped when I told them how I tested. Fifteen more did not show up after getting their exam grades. Hopefully the students remaining will be motivated to read the financial press and understand what they are reading. One day they will have to use these skills in the workplace. At least one student said that she has started listening to a financial blog and now understands much of what they are saying.

So maybe there is hope.

I keep seeing these articles asking why aren’t the democrats embracing DOGE in its efforts to cut wasteful spending and trim the federal budget. The answer is obvious. The expenditures for democrats are not wasteful. They play a vital role in getting them reelected. I doubt if the dems see any fraud or waste in any government’s spending. It is evident why they want to stop the reduction in the federal workforce. These are their constituents. Federal workers are overwhelmingly democrat. For democrats, every single federal employee is vital, every single federal job is essential, and every single dollar is necessary. There is no waste or fraud here. It is just a figment of Trump’s imagination and he is just out to get those that didn’t vote for him and that resist his agenda. Really, did anyone expect a single democrat to support anything done by Trump?

The dems have been holding anti-DOGE (I pronounce it dog-ee) rallies. Kweisi Mfume, the past and now present congressman from Baltimore said “This will be a congressional fight, a constitutional fight, a legal fight, and on days like this a street fight, yes we will stand.” I have no idea what all this fighting is about. But the republicans jumped right on it claiming that Mfume was advocating violence. Sounds like a racist slur to me. Essentially, Mfume is saying that he will resist any effort to fight waste and fraud – because of course in his eyes no waste and fraud can exist in the federal government. I am interested in what Mfume claims to be a constitutional fight. Doesn’t the constitution give the president authority over the federal agencies? Isn’t that’s why the president nominates those to run the agencies rather than having the congress appoint them? Of course, the Senate must confirm them and the congress must appropriate their budgets but that is the limit of congressional power. So what is the constitutional fight? Maxine Waters at the same rally had a rant that may go down in history when she said “We have got to tell Elon Musk that nobody elected your ass. Nobody told you you could get all of our private information. Nobody told you you could be in charge of the payments of this country.” No wonder she is called Mad Max.

AOC  urged Democrats to “blow this place up (meaning the congress). “We should not comply in advance. We should not make it easy for them to do what they need to do if they’re going to do it anyway. Make them do it anyway, but not with our help.” Blow it up indeed. Isn’t this what Trump is doing? Was AOC at the House hearing on COVID fraud where the witness said that $1 trillion was stolen?  Another witness testified “As Medicaid has grown, so too has its mismanagement. Today, more than one in five dollars spent on Medicaid is improper. In Medicaid alone, fraud and mismanagement is on track to cost U.S. taxpayers, get this, more than $1 trillion over the next ten years. When it comes to the problem of improper payments the Medicaid program is the biggest culprit, encompassing nearly one third of all federal improper payments. And more than 80 percent of Medicaid improper payments are due to one thing: eligibility errors. If Congress wants to help President Trump address wasteful spending, then targeting eligibility errors in Medicaid should be one of your top priorities.” Of course, no outrage came from any democrat. Greg Casar (D-TX) however castigated the “Trump-Musk administration” for firing watchdogs and cutting agencies and programs he believes are “vital to servicing the poor”. Gee Greg, if the inspector generals were doing their jobs why do you think they were fired?

On the senate side, Chuck Schumer along with Patty Murray, Ron Wyden and Elizabeth Warren also held a press conference where they railed against Elon Musk rather than against government waste – do we see a pattern here? The democrats oppose the auditing being done by DOGE. How else do you think that fraud and waste will be uncovered, Chuck? Schumer then led a rally against DOGE much like the one led by Mfume saying that democrats would resist Trump through the courts, the states and the congress. Wasn’t it fun hearing Warren accusing of Musk being unaccountable while bemoaning the defunding of her pet agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau which is itself shielded from accountability? That the democrats are on the wrong side of public opinion is encapsulated in a congressional democrat approval rating of 20 percent. Congressional republicans are at 40 percent.

So what if DOGE has uncovered crazy spending at USAID, found Politico was paid $8 million for federal subscriptions, found $2 trillion in Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security fraud and found $4.7 billion in untraceable Treasury payments? These are just the price of doing business for the democrats and seriously, the republicans are complicit too having only found religion after Trump got elected. One thing is for sure, I bet that neither Trump nor Musk will investigate how so many members of congress got so wealthy while earning a government salary. Consider Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.): annual salary $223,000, net worth $202 million; Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.): annual salary $200,000, net worth $95 million; Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.): annual salary $210,000, net worth $75 million and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.): annual salary: $285,000, net worth $67 million.

Instead Musk is going after low hanging fruit by wondering how so many government bureaucrats got so wealthy (Anthony Fauci). “There are quite a few people in the bureaucracy who have ostensibly a salary of a few hundred thousand dollars but somehow managed to accrue tens of millions of dollars in net worth,” he said. “We’re just curious as to where it came from.” For example, Samantha Power, head of USAID under Biden had her net worth increase from $6 million to $30 million in three years while earning a government salary. I’m sure there is a reasonable explanation. 

We know that the democrat politicians cry “resist” but what of their voters? I would think that even democrat voters would like to see government spending addressed. But I could be wrong. One thing is for certain. I have often said that the republicans are just democrat – lite. Has spending ever gone down with republicans in power? Let us see how the republicans act when Musk starts seeking to defund payola going to their constituents.

Thumbs down!.

Thumbs bug me. I send someone a text and they send me back a thumb. Is it that they are too lazy to text back words? Apparently this is the go to emoji of lazy people. I once considered it rude. But then I also consider it rude for the man to walk on the inside of a sidewalk. So pardon me if I feel like responding to your thumb with another finger.

Thumbs up?

I am not a Europhile which may come as no surprise. I am grateful for western civilization, culture, religion and Adam Smith. But in no way have I ever wanted to emulate any of the Europeans. British cuisine is so awful that the best British food is Indian. French cuisine gives me gas much like the effete snobs who populate the country. I like Italian cooking although it too can produce its share of backfires. My mother hated pasta. Spanish food is passable although I once turned down an offer to visit a tapas bar. Then there is Scandinavia which is too cold and much to bigoted for my tastes. Eastern Europe suffers from having a surfeit of unattractive women with unpronounceable names. It seems that throughout most of history, Europeans have been intent on killing each other. That still continues with the war in Ukraine. That Europe has not decided to shut down the Russian economy and fully protect Ukraine is enlightening. If they won’t do it, then why should we? I don’t get the US talking with Russia about ending the war in Ukraine. Don’t the Ukrainians have a say? What about the Europeans? This may be one of the weirdest things Donald Trump has done.

The Europeans are intent on driving themselves into the ground. The embrace of green energy, the shutting down of coal and nuclear, the high cost of getting less energy for more money speaks to the effeteness of the continent. When it started the EU was comparable to the United States in GDP. It is now 60 percent smaller. That should be scandalous. In Europe all you get is a ho hum. Europeans want to work less, produce less and complain more. Is this any way to run (or ruin) a continent? The shrinking populations of all of Europe – I don’t think that there is a country with a replacement rate over 2.1 – and the influx of aliens who do not share the Europeans’ values will be a death knell. 

The Europeans have abdicated their prosperity to the greens, to the influx of illegals who refuse to adapt to their new country’s culture and to general malaise (calling Jimmy Carter). It is like the politicians on the continent are nothing but a bunch of wimps (Italy’s Meloni and Poland’s Duda may be the exceptions). Seriously, do you think Rishi Sunak, Emmanuel Macron, Bajram Begaj, Vahagn Khachaturyan, Katalin Novak, Ignazio Cassis or any of Europe’s leaders is a capable leader? If so, enlighten me. For me this is a continent in decline. Its best days are past.

The Europeans have fallen victim to socialism and the welfare state. They were shocked by the two speeches given by JD Vance. In one speech Vance excoriated the Europeans saying that “the threat that I worry the most about vis-à-vis Europe is not Russia; it’s not China. It’s not any other external actor – What I worry about is the threat from within the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values, values shared with the United States of America.” Vance is telling the Europeans that having the so-called elites seeking to control their citizens’ lives is part and parcel of the continent’s decline. People should be free to make their own decisions. Vance is saying that going forward Europe must take a greater role in their own defense, reject rule of the elites and go back to its roots and strengthen western values against external and internal threats. Vance also scolded European leaders for stifling dissent, religious liberty and free speech. 

The Europeans were shocked, shocked! How dare the uppity Americans tell them what to do! The other important speech by Vance was on European censorship and heavy handed regulation of American high tech firms. Vance said “We believe that excessive regulation of the AI sector could kill a transformative industry. We feel very strongly that AI must remain free from ideological bias and that American AI will not be co-opted into a tool for authoritarian censorship.” Vance then shot a warning shot across the European bow saying for European governments to “look to this new frontier with optimism, rather than trepidation” and warned that “excessive regulation” of AI technologies could “kill a transformative industry.” He then said that the Trump administration “cannot and will not accept” efforts by foreign governments to tighten the screws on “U.S. tech companies with international footprints.” Pow! Take that you effete snobs!

Trump is defending American tech against the onslaught of European regulations. The European Commission fined Google over €8bn and Microsoft over €2bn. In 2024, Apple and Meta also received EU antitrust fines of €1.8bn and €800m. The French and Italian national authorities have levied substantial penalties of their own on Amazon, Apple and Google. In the past I have asked why there were no trillion dollar European firms. Maybe the answer lies in the regulatory straitjacket so prevalent on the continent. 

The future belongs elsewhere. Where? Perhaps America can continue to show the way, provided it throw off the impediments of climate change, social “justice” and letting the education industrial complex get away with not educating our children. I firmly believe that economic prosperity is closely aligned with economic freedom. With Europe in decline – outside of Ireland – where do we look for strong economic growth? Not Latin America where the five of the six largest economies are either in decline from socialist governments or in recession. Argentina, once a basket case is the sole bright spot with Milei as president. Asia with Malaysia, the Philippines, Viet Nam, Cambodia and Thailand is a maybe despite the train wreck that is the Chinese economy. Maybe Australia if it gets its act together. I would like to have high hopes for India and Nigeria but take a wait and see cautionary outlook. Maybe Botswana, Armenia, Ukraine and Poland. Of course there is Israel. South Africa is wonderful country burdened by a woeful and corrupt government. But then again, aren’t most governments corrupt? 

Regardless, if I were Donald Trump I would enter into free trade agreements with countries that valued private property, entrepreneurship and freedom. I would ignore the pompous self-indulgence that is Europe and have America lead the way to a more prosperous and freer world.

What would Adam Smith do?

I read Adam Smith’s “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations” my junior year at Georgia – yes we actually had to read books when I was in college. It changed my life by reinforcing my decision to major in economics rather than going to law school. Although the concept of marginal analysis was not present in the book, the brilliance of explaining the benefits of trade, the woes of mercantilism, wealth building, free markets, the division of labor, comparative advantage and productivity made perfectly good sense to me. I was astounded to find all of this in a book published in 1776. Smith is our greatest economist and everyone that followed has only been expanding on his ideas and basic principles. If there are non-truths in the Wealth of Nations, please point them out to me because I don’t know of any. 

Smith was the father of laissez faire. Smith said that individuals acting in their own self interest created a greater benefit to the economy than actions taken by the government. This is Smith’s “invisible hand.” In that the government did not have a profit motive, it had no incentive to minimize costs which necessarily lead to waste. Smith was not opposed to the government but argued that markets were more efficient and less wasteful. But government had an important role. Government was responsible for national defense, the administration of justice, enforce private property rights and the provision of public goods. Why? Because of the mispricing of “public goods” by the free market. A public good is one where there is market failure which is a precise term meaning that markets will misprice a public good.

Consider the following. Although individuals and collections of individuals could theoretically provide for the national defense, the market solution would be suboptimal. This is because national defense is a public good and would be subject to market failure if not funded by the government. I once asked my students that if they could dictate how much of their taxes could go for national defense, how much would they allocate? I got answers from 20 percent to 90 percent. I told them the correct answer was zero. The reason being that if I contributed zero I would get defended as much as the person who contributed 100 percent. I said that if the Russians sent missiles to Oak Ridge, our military would not say “Ignore the missile that is going to hit that house with the red roof because he did not allocate any of his money for defense.” Thus why pay for a good if you can get it for free?

The same is true with other public goods such as infrastructure. Yes you could have toll roads throughout your city and toll booths at the entrance to each neighborhood. But it would be frightfully inefficient. So collect tax revenues and let the government build them and maintain them. In the same vein, Smith advocates a role for government in education. Here it is the investment in human capital that benefits future generations but is paid for by the current one. Although I have the feeling that Smith might favor publicly funded private education, his view is that education is a public good.

As to the administration of justice Smith says that the duty of the government is to protect  “as far as possible, every member of the society from the injustice or oppression of every other member of it, or the duty of establishing an exact administration of justice.” No argument there.

Lastly, individual private property and property rights are essential to Smith. Here again the individual acting in their own self interest further the welfare of the society. Smith is against constraining trade both domestically by individuals and by businesses as well as constraint of trade by one country toward another. Hear that Donald Trump? Government’s role is to see that markets operate freely without collusion and cartels. Smith opposed cartels, which were legal in his day. He famously said that when businesses gathered to talk amongst themselves it was to restrict competition to keep prices high and profits high. Thus, a role of government was to foster competition by preventing constraint of trade which is ironic since much of today’s government restricts competition.

Thus, given the state of the government today, one would ask “What would Adam Smith do”?  Smith would likely say that if the government is outside its prescribed roles, then its actions are necessarily wasteful and harmful to the economy. The spending on such projects is simply wasteful. That spending is financed by issuing government debt which raises market interest rates and makes borrowing more expensive in the private sector. The harmful impact is that there will be less capital accumulation and lower levels of economic growth. There will also be higher levels of inflation lowering the real income of residents. Thus when Smith would look at the budget slashing and federal employment rollbacks coming from Trump and DOGE, Smith would pooh pooh them unless the cuts were permanent. Currently, all the budget slashing and people being laid off is only temporarily. If the government agency remains on the books, then a new administration could easily resuscitate it. Trump must eliminate the agency but without congressional approval, this seems unlikely.

Thus Trump and Musk’s efforts are only transitory and short term in nature. Adam Smith would call for the complete elimination of much of today’s government. Trump while trying to restrain the growth of the government by downsizing its current components is doomed to fail. The real task is to limit the scope of government which will in turn limit its size. This would mean eliminating most of the cabinet level agencies completely. No more departments of education, energy, transportation, commerce, interior, agriculture and labor. No more HHS. No more HUD. No more veterans’ affairs. It would mean preventing the agencies from expanding their mission and reach. How many undersecretaries do we really need? Do you know that there are over 4,000 presidential appointed positions in the federal government? Adam Smith would be appalled at a government spending $7 trillion a year. The fact that we are not appalled is a sad commentary on how we have allowed the government to grow like Topsy with politicians handing out billions for purposes related more to their own welfare rather than the public good.

Spring training is coming soon.  

The college football season is over. The NFL just had its Super Bowl leaving only basketball and hockey as nationally televised sports. I am not a fan of either. I love baseball. Some of my fondest memories involved my folks taking their vacations to coincide with the Brooklyn Dodgers schedule. We would either go to Brooklyn and stay with my mother’s brother (Uncle Son) or to Cincinnati and stay with my Dad’s brother (Uncle Floyd). We saw Jackie Robinson and the wonderful Dodgers of that era. We saw Willie Mays when they played the Giants and Frank Robinson, Curt Flood and Vada Pinson when they played the Reds.

This year, pitchers and catchers started reporting on February 9 with all teams reporting on February 12. Although it seems that there is only one truly great player today (Shohei Ohtani), I would rather watch the talk on the MLB Network than to see LaBron or Luka running down the court. Even Draymond Green calls the basketball boring. He is right. Baseball may be the most strategic sport. Every pitch has a purpose. I am still amazed that the outfielders can run at the crack of the bat, turn their backs to the infield, run to a spot and put up their glove and the ball lands in it. How do they do that? 

Basketball seems to be just running up and down the court, jacking up threes and slam dunks. I actually think basketball would be a better sport if it were four on four.

The spring training games start February 20^th with the Cubs playing the evil empire of the west, the Dodgers. There are two leagues, the Cactus League (Arizona) and the Grapefruit League (Florida) with 15 teams in each league. We always spend a week at Maderia Beach to watch the Rays play somebody (we chose the games based on the opponent). This year the question is whether we want to drive all the way across Tampa Bay to see the Rays play their regular season games at the Yankees spring ball park since the roof at the Trop got ripped off by Hurricane Milton. They got guaranteed funding for a new stadium in St Petersburg so they will not be moving to Tampa as was previously rumored.

Both of us once lived in Florida and hated it. And this was fifty years ago before the influx of millions into the state. I have dear friends who have lived in Florida ever since our days being assistant professors at the University of Florida. They retired to a peaceful neighborhood in the Sarasota area. They usually come see us when we camp at Maderia Beach. But last year because of failing health, we went to see them. We were appalled by the congestion. It was bumper to bumper traffic. The peaceful neighborhoods were all encroached by high rise condos and apartments. People actually blew their horns – must be Yankees. It was awful. I can’t imagine living there. My friends bemoaned the change. I remember saying that the two happiest days of my life were the day when I moved to Florida (from Columbus, Ohio) and the day I moved away.

We will also start going back to Cincinnati for a couple of times a year if they finally decide to field a major league team rather than the imposters who are triple A players wearing the major league uniform – with the except of Elly de la Cruz. They added Jose Trevino, Brady Singer, Taylor Rogers and most notably Gavin Lux so they should be better. Perhaps the best acquisition was Terry Francona as manager. Tito is a great manager with a great track record in Boston (despite the 2011 fried chicken fiasco) and Cleveland (my favorite American League club).

I am an Atlanta Braves fan although my fandom went down a few notches when they let Freddie Freeman go to the Evil Empire of the West where he was MVP of the World Series. The Braves also let Dansby Swanson go to the Cubs and haven’t been as strong at shortstop. Orlando Arcia has his moments but is probably just a place holder for phenoms Nacho Alverez or Jose Perdomo. They let Max Fried go to the Mets (its pronounced “freed” rather than “fried”). Charlie Morton is also gone. But they bring back Chris Sale – if he can stay healthy – Renaldo Lopez, and Spencer Strider (if he is healthy). Ronald Acuna, Jr is back (if he is healthy), along with Matt Olson at first base who replaced Freddie. Olson seems to alternate good and bad years, so this should be a good year. Austin Riley is back at third (provided he is healthy). Sean Murphy is catching (if he is healthy) having let Travis D’Arnaud go to the Evil Empire of the West.

If everyone stays healthy this time, the Braves have a legitimate chance to win the East and play the Dodgers in the World Series. The Evils added Blake Snell and bring back Clayton Kershaw, Dustin May and Tyler Glasnow. But the biggest addition to the pitching staff is the unbelievable Shohei Ohtani who might win the Cy Young, MVP and the triple crown in the same year. The Braves have a chance but honestly, the Dodgers are going to win it all – if they can stay healthy.

I had been planning to go to spring training this year but agreeing to return to UT to teach a class derailed those plans – as well as messing up my turkey season. But this is a one off and next year I’ll be back in the woods and also will go to spring training – if I can stay healthy.