I am frequently reminded of how infrequently I am writing to you. Please accept my apologies. It is not that I don’t care. For Pete’s sake, it is, perhaps, that I care too much.

We live in a hot mess of a world. There are those who would say “Jim, the world has always been a mess. It is ever thus.” Fair point. But in reality, we live in this world, in this time. We can study and learn from history; alas, far too few of our politicians seem to have learned anything from past events. So we are left to deal with the carnage wrought by horrible political leaders and a society in general that has run amok. I wish I could confer a bubbly outlook upon each of you. I wish.

What do the Egyptians, Grecians, Romans, French, and British have in common? They were, once upon their times, the greatest civilizations in the worlds they each knew. Without exception, moral and spiritual decline, combined with apathy, lethargy, and complacency led to their respective declines and falls. It is true that history does not repeat itself. How could it? But that does not mean that there are not lessons to be learned from history.

The United States is at a tipping point. Since the first colonists arrived, we have worked harder and produced more than anyone, anywhere. We prided ourselves in our commitment to hard work and reward. We developed a fierce sense of nationalism; not in an ugly way, but rather, in a way that lifted our spirts and made us excited to be Americans. This is no longer the case. Countries snicker at us. They see that we have become a nation of angry people for whom the past represents nothing other than a collective quagmire of sinister racial supremacy. Heck, we spend more time trying to identify our own genders than we do learning about (and truly understanding) our past. We are a spoiled, self-indulgent, introspective nation of malcontents.

Those of you old enough to have worked and lived in the 1970’s know exactly what these current times feel like. We are experiencing runaway inflation, and a government quite willing to point the finger of blame at anyone and everyone, while assuming no responsibility for the festering ills that challenge our country’s economic stability. In the past three years, both President’s Trump and Biden opened the spigots and printed currency as if there was no tomorrow. Americans, flush with cash, started playing the market. Consumers spent. Supply chains were stretched. China locked its people down. And Mr. Putin, the strongman of this century, took a view that the United States was so preoccupied with its own reflection in the mirror that it would not blink when tanks rolled into Ukraine. Well, the chickens are coming home to roost. Inflation is out of control and will be for months to come. The market is correcting itself to reflect valuations that border on sanity; not the bonkers world we witnessed in the past eighteen months. We did, at least, blink when the tanks started rolling.

President Biden finds a new public enemy number one every time he tells that people how much he cares. The problem is obviously not his ever increasing tax and spend mentality. All one needs to do is look at the greedy oil companies, meat packers, corporations…you name it! Everyone is at fault except him and his team of demagogic dinguses.

The president continues to rant on about passing yet another spending bill. He doesn’t get it. He is devaluing our dollar and at some point we will no longer be the world’s reserve currency. When that day happens, it will not be pretty.

Here is an idea. Instead of another inane (insane?) giveaway, and if we feel like we just must spend more money we dont have, let’s pass legislation providing huge tax breaks to companies incentivizing them to bring critical manufacturing jobs back the US. How about that for a win-win? There would actually be a positive return on investment in terms of job creation and we would boost our national security to boot! (Whoever thought it was smart to end up relying on potential adversaries to make chips and other critical supplies should now, I hope, be rethinking that strategy.)

You’ll note that I have steered clear of the Roe v Wade issue. I am not going to go there. The amount of deceipt and outright mistruths propagated by some politicians and most of the media is nauseating. Enough said.

Lastly, have you noticed how many times Mr. Biden blinks when he is making public remarks. Someone give that man some eyedrops! I tried to capture what he looks like when speaking. Click here to see! For Pete’s sake!

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