Donald Trump was inaugurated as our 45th President on January 20, 2017.  Proving once again that there is nothing less liberal than a liberal, we were treated to two days of violence, demonstrations, and nearly incomprehensible speeches from a variety of leftists.  On inauguration day, while the media commentators gushed on and on about our history of the peaceful transfer of power, crowds of anarchists started fires, smashed store windows and destroyed cars.  Instead of brown shirts, these “activists” sported black masks obscuring their faces.  Democracy in action, right?  The following day, we were treated to the women’s march on Washington, which the media billed as a spontaneous demonstration of opposition to the new President, whose numbers dwarfed those attending the inauguration.  Two things.  First of all, despite all the heat and light about inauguration crowd numbers, who really cares?  Secondly, political demonstrations rarely are spontaneous.  Once upon a time, I took part in a “spontaneous” gathering of “Young Voters for the President,” which appeared at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York in 1972, to greet Richard Nixon at a campaign event.  The spontaneity was orchestrated by the Nixon campaign, which provided buses for the Young Voters.  The women’s march on January 21 was no exception.  It was a carefully planned event, orchestrated by leftist extremist groups, most of which have ties to that jolly left-wing billionaire, George Soros, the man with the money, who has dedicated what’s left of his life to undermining the stability of the United States.  How do I know this?  Well, the march was run by a gaggle of Partners and Leaders, all of whom oppose our system of government, and who get funding from George Soros.  The march was uniformly anti-Trump.   The event was billed as a march for women’s equality.  No doubt many well-meaning women attended.  They were used.  Two more things.  First, Trump hasn’t done anything yet, much less has he proposed any diminution of women’s rights (nor could he do so).  Secondly, if women are suffering from some inequality which existed prior to Trump’s inauguration, then why didn’t this crowd mention its complaints to Il Duce Obama, who reigned for the previous 8 years?  You know why.  This was a march for women’s equality at which all women were not welcome.  The march Partners included Planned Parenthood, and it was made plain that any woman who was not in favor of abortion was not welcome.  Al Sharpton’s National Action Network was a Partner.  Its members expressed the opinion that white women should be permitted to march only if they were willing to admit their privileged status.  In addition, Soros backed pro-Muslim groups such as CAIR and the Arab American Association of New York, both of which are tied to the terrorist organization HAMAS, were Partners.  And as we know, no one supports rights for women more than Islamic fundamentalists.  Then there were the march chairpersons.  Harry Belafonte, a 90 year old unreconstructed Stalinist, who supported that well known champion of equality, Fidel Castro.  Harry actually urged his comrade Barack Obama to “act like a third world dictator and imprison anyone who supports entitlement reform.”  Of course, Obama needed no urging, and he wasn’t acting.  Gloria Steinem was a chairperson.  She made a speech which called into question her intelligence and her sanity.  Ms. Steinem said, “if Martin Luther King, JFK, Bobby Kennedy and Malcolm X had lived, then Nixon would not have been elected President, and there would not have been many of the wars that we had.”  Huh?  For the record, the Kennedys started the military buildup in Vietnam, and fellow Democrat Lyndon Johnson expanded the war.  Richard Nixon negotiated the end of that war.  He resigned in 1974, and really can’t be blamed for any wars thereafter.  Gloria doesn’t like Trump though.  She said that experienced psychiatrists have concluded that Trump is mentally ill.  Gloria also said that luckily those “great leaders Barack and Michelle Obama are still with us, despite the many threats to their lives.”  Huh?  Maybe those experienced psychiatrists should examine Gloria’s head.  Another chairperson was Linda Sarsour,  the head of the Arab American Association of New York mentioned above.  Obama proclaimed Ms. Sarsour, “a champion for change.”  What change?  Sarsour advocates Sharia law in America, which would definitely affect women’s rights, by abolishing them, and forcing women into the subservience they currently enjoy in the Muslim world.  After all, nothing says equality like a good stoning or an honor killing.  And I can’t forget to mention the “celebrities” at the march, who used the event as a showcase for their intolerance, vulgarity and stupidity.  Madonna proclaimed a “revolution of love,” then proved her love by telling march detractors, “Fuck you!”  She said this twice to further demonstrate her loving nature.  Madonna reported she was “thinking a lot about blowing up the White House.”  She later called this only a metaphor.  I have a proposal.  Madonna shouldn’t be arrested if she can spell metaphor.  And let’s not leave out Ashley Judd.  Ms. Judd is dedicated to protecting women from the use of improper language.  She once wrote a book in which she criticized rappers and hip-hop “artists” for lyrics demeaning women as “Hos” and “bitches.”  Then, when rappers objected, she apologized to them.  Mustn’t hurt their feelings, “you feel me?” Of course, she won’t give the President the same benefit of the doubt.  Many of the marchers carried signs which decried words used by Donald Trump as hurtful, unacceptable and improper.  Ms. Judd drove home this point by calling the President the devil and declaring that “it feels like Hitler in the streets.”  Either I’m afflicted by knowing too much about history, or Ms. Judd simply knows nothing about it (which is more likely), but the demonstrations of January 20 and 21, 2017, what with the window smashings, public burnings, and mass marching, were a lot more reminiscent of the Nazi era than anything Donald Trump has said or done. Here’s a photo of the 2017 march.

Women marched in Nazi Germany too.

Looks like they traded the dirndls for pink hats.  It is unfair to compare the two, however.  The German women picked up the trash after their rallies.  Not so in Washington.

There are two things we can take away from the women’s march in Washington:   1) you can’t underestimate the ignorance of a celebrity; and    2) there is no limit to the extent the Left will go to undermine this President.

To quote a popular bumper sticker, “January 20, 2017, the end of an error.” Today is inauguration day for Donald J. Trump, our 45th President.  But before we get to President Trump’s swearing in, we first must mark an equally important event, the end of the reign of terror of the 44th President, Il Duce, Barack Obama.  So before Mr. Trump is sworn in, let me swear Obama out (or is it off?).  Ross Perot used to say that Bill Clinton was the luckiest man in the world because he became President right after the Cold War ended and got to take credit for spending less on defense.  That was before Obama crawled out from under his rock in Chicago and announced he would agree to be our President.  Timing, they say, is everything, and Obama had impeccable timing.  He showed up just in time to push Hillary Clinton off the stage, because the first black candidate trumps (no pun intended) the first female candidate anytime.  First, he was running after 8 tiresome years of George W. Bush, so any Democrat had a big advantage.  Then, he got to run against the nearly brain-dead (even back in 2008) John McCain.  Then, a financial meltdown right before election day, so no Republican was going to win that year.  Obama came in on a wave of good feeling.  Chris Matthews even felt that thrill down his leg.  He had a unique opportunity to bring Americans together.  Think Nixon, as the only President who could go to China and Russia.  But Obama squandered his opportunity, for you see, unlike Richard Nixon, Barack Obama was not a statesman, but merely a community organizer.  A statesman is a dedicated public servant who works tirelessly for the betterment of his country.  A community organizer is just a rabble-rouser, and nothing more.  That was our 44th President.  He had every opportunity to bring us together, but his only work experience before becoming President was in driving groups apart.  In that he succeeded.  It turned out to be the only thing he was good at.  His domestic policy?  Spending, which he euphemistically calls “investment.”  John Maynard Keynes thought, if the government spent more, earnings would increase.  Obama was Keynes on steroids.  He took a $10 trillion debt and ran it up to $20 trillion.  It didn’t work.  It never does.  Earnings have remained flat for 15 years.  Obama got the U3 unemployment number down below 5% by ignoring the U6, the record number of people no longer even looking for a job.  Our workforce participation is at a 45 year low.  Obama is pleased.  This Administration abrogated any semblance of control of our borders, inviting illegal aliens, including criminals and potential terrorists, to enter at will.  Obama is pleased.   Il Duce’s greatest accomplishment was Obamacare; based on a tissue of lies, and passed in the dead of night, without a single Republican vote.  It was so great, Obama had to unlawfully amend it and delay its implementation for 2 election cycles, lest the voters realize what a disaster it was.  Now we know.  Obamacare costs more, covers less, and greatly increases deductibles.  The result, more people now have insurance they cannot afford to buy or to use.  Obama is pleased.  Obama’s foreign policy was a poor joke.  You can’t “lead from behind.”  If America fails to lead, then the Russians, the Chinese, the ISIS terrorists, or all of the above, step in.  Simply put, our allies no longer trust us, our enemies no longer fear us, and the world is a much more dangerous place.  Obama is pleased.  Think the greatest threat we face is Islamic terrorism?  Obama doesn’t think so.  He never even uses the “T” word, much less the “I” word.  He traded deserter Bowe Bergdahl for 5 ISIS terrorist leaders, who are now back at work, killing Americans.  Obama isn’t worried, though, because Obama says the greatest threat we face is global warming.  Obama is nuts.  Police officers are under siege.  Obama sides with their killers.  This not only is neglect, it is criminal neglect.  Now, as he goes out the door, he’s leaving land mines around the world for his successor, like sending troops abroad, expelling Russian diplomats, and changing the immigration policy for Cubans.  Then there are the pardons.  He claims to be outraged by the release of John Podesta’s emails, but he released traitor Bradley Manning, who sent over 1 million pages of classified documents to WikiLeaks.  In a nutshell, Barack Obama was handed the reigns to the greatest democracy on the face of the Earth.  In his judgment, the great nation he inherited was in need of a fundamental transformation.  He leaves us poorer, less secure in our homes and on the streets, more sorely in need of an affordable healthcare system, friendless on the world stage, and at the mercy of our enemies.  Obama is concerned about his legacy?  His legacy is secure.  It is a legacy of shame and failure.  It is a legacy of coddling criminals and rewarding traitors.  Obama’s slogan should have been, “America Last.”  Obama is despicable and delusional.  Mercifully, the Obama presidency ends today.  It’s time to swear him out.  Good riddance, Il Duce.  You are a lying, worthless, would-be tin horn dictator, who was a poor excuse for a President.  Don’t let the doorknob hit you in your bony ass on the way out of the White House.  Whatever Mr. Trump has to offer will be a HUGE improvement.

Proving once again that the federal government is out of control, the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration has issued an opinion which reignites the the war on law enforcement officers which was the subject of the August 12, 2016 edition of Frank on Friday.  Police officers do a thankless job.  When you come running out of the building yelling, “He’s got a gun!” it’s a police officer who runs inside to face the gun.  Homicide is the leading cause of death for young black men aged 18 to 34.  Although they are about 7% of the population, black men account for 49% of all homicide victims.  93% of these victims are killed by other young black men.  Black men killed by police account for less than 1/2 of 1% of all homicides.  Yet the Left claims, and the Media dutifully reports, that there is an epidemic of police killings of black men because the police are racist.  Now, it doesn’t make any difference to the Left if the police shooter is also black, because Leftists never want to be burdened by the facts.  We are told that the police are a blood thirsty bunch that enjoys shooting black men.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  I spent more than 25 years working closely with police officers.  The last thing any police officer wants to do is to take a life.  But, groups like Black Lives Matter declared open season on the police, and we have had a number of ambush killings of police officers.  Our soon to be ex-President did nothing to discourage this violence, instead supporting the Black Lives Matters thugs.  As I write this, a Republican member of Congress is in hot water for taking down a student’s painting of Police Officers as Pigs, that was displayed in the hallway of a Congressional Building by the Congressional Black Caucus.  It never stops.  Communities across the country tried to find some small way to show their appreciation and support for law enforcement.  One way was that some communities painted a thin blue line between the double yellow lines dividing the roadways, as a sign of respect for law enforcement.  The Federal Highway Administration now has issued the opinion that these thin blue lines are not in compliance with the federal Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices for Streets and Highways (MUTCD).  Due either to its bias or its ignorance, the Media immediately reported that the federal government had declared the blue lines to be “illegal.”  Wrong again.  The reason why the FHA didn’t declare the lines illegal is because the federal government has no authority to make that decision.  The MUTCD sets standards, but has no enforcement authority for a very simple reason, called the Constitution of the United States.  The first page of the Manual acknowledges this fact, stating that “States differ in how they comply with the standards.”  Although it has lately been forgotten or ignored, when I went to school, we were taught about the police powers of the States.  Simply put, the federal government is supposed to confine its activities to those duties set forth in the Constitution, things such as foreign policy, the military, immigration and interstate commerce.  There is no mention of roadway standards in the Constitution.   Everything else is the province of the States.  Each State has police powers, which encompass control over its own traffic regulations.  So the Feds can’t declare the blue line “illegal.”  Secondly, the FHA opinion doesn’t even make sense.  The opinion interprets a portion of the MUTCD that states that the double yellow line dividing the road is to be separated “by a discernible space.”  The FHA opinion states, without any authority, that a “discernible space” must not contain any other marking.  Moreover, it cannot be blue, because blue is to be used only for handicapped parking spaces.  Now, a thing is discernible when it is perceptible by vision or intellect.  In other words, if you can see two parallel yellow lines and visually make out the fact that there is a space in between them, which is what makes them parallel, then that space is discernible.  The fact that the space is blue, if anything, makes it even more apparent that they are double yellow lines.  As far as blue being used only for handicapped parking, does anyone really believe that a handicapped driver will mistake the thin blue line in the middle of the roadway as a very long and narrow handicapped parking space?  Not likely.  I’d like to believe that this bureaucrat from the Federal Highway Administration was simply doing his over-officious, meddlesome job when he issued his opinion, and wasn’t trying to stop communities from honoring law enforcement, but with the Obama crowd you never know.  Perhaps the FHA is another part of the federal swamp in need of immediate drainage.

It is interesting that, whenever a Marxist/socialist movement appears, it is symbolized by a color, usually of the clothing worn by its practitioners.  And so, the Nazis had their Brown Shirts, and Mussolini’s Italian fascists were the Black Shirts.  The communists’ color was red, hence Red China.  Then again, most Chinese wore Mao’s blue suits.  Go figure.  The filthy rabble that propped up Juan and Evita Peron was so poor they didn’t even have shirts, hence, the descamisados (shirtless ones).   Each and every one of these fascist movements had one thing in common.  They advocated complete control over all aspects of their respective governments and economies, and the repression of individual rights and free enterprise.  The leaders of the Leftist movement in America were highly educated people.  They read Karl Marx, and they spent much of their time railing about the proletariat and the means of production.  They presented themselves as champions of the poor and disadvantaged.  The early Labor movement was run by communists who proclaimed they were just trying to help the working man, who was being screwed by the bosses.  He was.  And it was a good cause, but bad leadership.  Eventually, the union communists were supplanted by the Mafia, because there was good money to be made from Labor.  The working man still got screwed.  But I digress.  The Leftist intelligentsia revered the Soviet Union, the true Marxist workers’ paradise, and it labored to bring its blessings to America, the land of filthy capitalism.  The fact that most of the Leftist “brain-trust” consisted of well to do people who gained their wealth from capitalism was, and remains, lost on this bunch.  Witness, the millionaire Marxists who populate Hollywood and New York City.  Also lost on this bunch was the fact that the people condemned to life in the Soviet Union’s workers’ paradise were uniformly destitute and unhappy, witness the Soviet workers’ saying, “We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us.”  The Left took a big hit when the Soviet Union fell apart in the late 1980’s.  Apparently, 60 years of paradise was all the paradise that the Soviet people could stand.  When the Berlin Wall came down, it looked like it was all over for the Reds, and it was.  But, it wasn’t all over for the Leftist movement, because almost overnight, the Reds all turned Green.  Proving once again that, if they didn’t have hypocrisy, they’d have nothing at all, the Left embraced environmentalism as its new religion.  And so, the Green Movement was born.  A different color, but the same goal, to gain control over every aspect of our lives by gaining iron-fisted control of the government and the economy, and in so doing, repressing individual rights.  Why?  For the disadvantaged working man, of course.  Picture it, the same people who never felt obliged to complain about environmental destruction in Russia or China want to shut down American industries, for our own good, of course.  And they found a champion in Il Duce Obama, who, during the recent 8 year unpleasantness, has done his best to regulate economic growth out of existence.  Enter Donald Trump, the unlikely antidote to Obama’s galloping socialism.  The election of Trump was a message from the disadvantaged working man and woman to the Leftist masterminds – “Please don’t help us anymore.”  Trump promises to deregulate to get the engine of capitalism going again.  You see, Trump understands that economic growth, and not the government dole, is the path to prosperity.   What’s left of the Democrat Party disagrees, and has vowed a fight to the finish.  Trump’s pick of Scott Pruitt to head the EPA is a case in point.  Pruitt currently is the Attorney General of Oklahoma.  Now, Oklahoma is both a red state and a fossil fuel state.  That would be bad enough, but the greenish-red Left has branded Pruitt as a climate change denialist.  Now, I have no problem with an EPA that limits its activities to doing what it was created by President Nixon to do, namely, make sure we have clean air and water.  In 1970, that was a glaring problem.  You may recall, that when the EPA was created, water pollution was so bad that the Cayahoga river in Cleveland actually caught fire due to the poisons being deposited therein.  Air pollution in 1970?  Remember acid rain in the Midwest and smog alerts?  The EPA did us a service by taking poisons like lead out of the air and sewage out of the water.  Car emissions are a tiny fraction of what they were in 1970.  That’s a good thing, and a good job by the EPA.  But the EPA has been perverted into the tool of the Left, as a means to control the economy.  That’s why it’s now trying to regulate carbon dioxide, as a pollutant.  You’d think any reasonable person would realize that a substance we continually exhale should not be so regarded, but the Greens do not.  They haven’t come right out and said we should stop breathing, but the Green movement is tied up with the anti-Growth movement, part of which advocates population control.  And what was Scott Pruitt’s sin?  He doesn’t blindly accept that humans are causing climate change, thus, he is a denialist.  What Pruitt really said was this, “Scientists continue to disagree about the degree and the extent of global warming and its connection to the actions of mankind.”  For the Greens, this is heresy.  The fact that all climate scientists agree with Pruitt’s statement is irrelevant.  Al Gore, Il Duce Obama, Green billionaire Democrat fundraiser Tom Steyer, and all good Leftist comrades have declared, as a matter of faith, that there is no dispute about man-made global warming.  The fact that 30,000 scientists have signed a petition saying they are not convinced doesn’t matter.  The fact that warming stopped 17 years ago doesn’t matter.  The fact that the scientist whose graph supposedly “proved” global warming has admitted he falsified the data doesn’t matter.  That’s the way religion works.  Those with open minds are not welcome.  We have to Save the Planet.  And if the poor have to continue to suffer so be it.  By the way, when you combine a red shirt and a green shirt, you get a brown shirt.

It doesn’t seem like the year is over, but let’s review the almost late, not so great 2016.  We entered the year in anticipation of finally seeing the end of Il Duce Obama’s socialist workers’ paradise.  In February, I predicted that a conservative populist could win the presidency.  I had Ted Cruz in mind, but I was partially right, anyway.  Also in February in the Superbowl (that’s right Superbowl, not “the big game”), take that NFL, Denver beat the Carolina Panthers.  Peyton Manning retired from football, but he still can be heard singing on TV.  “If you thought he’d leave you’re wrong.”  The political primaries got started in February.   Bernie Sanders kept beating Hillary. Hillary got almost all the delegates.  This made us suspect misconduct by Hillary and the Democrat Party, but of course, we wouldn’t know for sure till the Media told us that Putin and his Russian comrades “hacked” the election. Thanks Vlad.  Donald Trump won most early Republican primaries, but he was just a joke right?  Ha. Ha.  Jeb Bush spent millions, got about three delegates, and immediately dropped out.  He was not missed.  A death blow to the Establishment, but we still didn’t understand what was coming.  Later in the month Antonin Scalia died, bringing to an end his almost 30 year tenure as, perhaps, one of the last constitutional originalists.  Rest in Peace Justice Scalia.  In March, Trump won big on Super Tuesday.  Other Republicans dropped out.  That’s good for Rubio and Cruz, right?  Now the voters will realize that Trump is a joke and get serious, and Trump will go away.  He really doesn’t want to be President anyway.   Or so we thought. Bernie Sanders kept winning primaries and getting almost no delegates.  If only the Russians had told us, we would have known back then that Hillary and the Democrats were crooked.  In April, Trump just kept winning primaries.  Ted Cruz dropped out, leaving me as a delegate without a candidate.  Now we’re really screwed, right?  In June, Trump and Clinton won their Parties’ nominations.  The impossible happened.  The Republican rank and file won’t support Trump and he has no turnout organization.  We’re in big trouble, right?  In July, we had the political conventions.  Trump comes out of them behind in all the polls.  We got a little respite in August.  At the Rio Olympics, Michael Phelps won almost all the medals.  Ryan Lochte won the rest, and then got famous for lying about being robbed.  Now we know it’s scandal, and not accomplishment, that’s important to the Media.  I am on a ship in Alaska when this happens, so who cares?  In September, the political campaigns got going.  Hillary collapses at a September 11 event, but there’s nothing wrong with her, right?  Trump is still behind in all the polls. WikiLeaks keeps, well, leaking hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee.  They are very embarrassing to Democrats.  They don’t deny what is being leaked is the whole truth, but they object to the fact that the revelation of the truth may affect them adversely in the election. The NFL season begins, and the Giants beat Dallas.  Good!  October arrives, and Trump remains behind in all the polls.  Hillary pillories Trump for failing to swear that he will accept the result of the election.  Only a dictator won’t accept the results she chides.  Meanwhile, a dictator, Il Duce Obama, tells Trump nobody can rig an election in America so, “get over it.”  Portending a sea change in karma, the Chicago Cubs win the World Series for the first time in 108 years.  We still don’t understand what is coming.  In November, Trump is still behind in every poll.  No commentator thinks he win, indeed, they all simply assume he already has lost.  On election night, at 5 p.m., the announcement of the exit polls seems to confirm all the polls and commentators, it looks bad for Trump.  Early the next morning, Trump wins the election, including winning Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Republicans will control the Executive and all of the Legislature.  Hillary and her cohorts become unhinged.  Trump begins to make Cabinet appointments, and the Establishments of both crooked Parties are shocked, shocked, when they realize that he actually plans to do exactly what he promised to do.  In other words, Trump told us the truth.  Hey, you can’t do that!  In the last month of the year,  the Democrats, still in denial, try recounts in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania to change the result of the election.  They prove only that they themselves cheated in Michigan.  Obama and Clinton announce “Let’s just say we lost because Russia “hacked” the election.”  To quote Woody Allen, “We could say it, I don’t know what it means, but we could say it.”  Then, the Dems try to convince Electors to abandon their pledges and elect Hillary instead.  Fat-Ass idiot Michael Moore promises to pay any fines incurred by faithless Electors, that is Electors who agree to break the law.  This is what we call in the law a solicitation to commit a series of crimes.  Some State Attorney General should throw his fat ass in jail.  Ho, Ho, Ho, Fat Boy. This doesn’t work either, and on December 19, Trump finally wins.  Two Electors in Texas voted for Ron Paul instead of Trump.  Five Electors abandoned Hillary, so the final tally was Trump 304 to Hillary 225.  More good news in 2016 – Fidel Castro finally dropped dead at age 90.  Well, they say only the good die young.  The Giants beat Dallas for the second time, and look like they will make the playoffs.  Who cares, we beat Dallas twice, so it’s a good year no matter what happens from here out.  So that’s about it for 2016.  If you weren’t happy with this year,  2017 has to be better.  Happy New Year.