DEI Infects the High Court

The sad left was publicly, chest-poundingly upset by yesterday's last-day decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court, most particularly the case in which the Court's majority ruled on the issue of district courts' capacity to issue rulings with nationwide impact.

The case itself actually related to the concept of birthright citizenship and the interpretation of the Constitutional amendment that dealt with the concept.  Curiously, that aspect of the decision wasn't dealt with, for now.  What was decided, in a 6-3 majority opinion that now serves as legal precedent, is that district courts no longer have the ability to block the President from implementing executive powers, certainly not beyond the impact of the case before such court.

Beyond the celebration of those believing in law and the Constitution, and the tooth-grinding of the left, a non-trivial amount of the post-mortem appeared to deal with a minority opinion delivered by Ketanji Brown Jackson, the most junior associate justice on the Court.

Justices deliver minority opinions all the time.  The interpretation of written law is a large part of why there is a Supreme Court in the first place; the law is the words of the legislation, and legislatures often produce ambiguously written legislation, as well as laws which are in potential violation of the Constitution. 

Jackson's minority opinion was fraught with issues, not the least of which being the lack of Constitutional foundation for her rationale; but even more so the problem that, as Justice Amy Barrett wrote in her commentary on Jackson's dissent, that Jackson was objecting to the concept of an imperial executive and replacing it with an imperial judiciary, a rather immature approach for a Supreme Court justice.

We should all be bothered by the presence on the Court of such a political individual, and we are, but it is even sadder that the opinions of this justice will forever be questions of competence related to her appointment itself.

Ketanji Brown Jackson is black.  Duh.  We all can see that. No would care; Justice Clarence Thomas is equally black, and certainly has strong opinions flavored by his own beliefs in the primacy of the Constitution. But Thomas was not appointed the Court because of his race, but because of his background and approach to Constitutional law. You might say race was not a factor in his appointment, but considering the hateful rhetoric thrown at him by senators -- including Joe Biden, then a back-bench senator from Delaware -- it was certainly part of the process.

But in Jackson's case, race was not only a factor, but a requirement.  Joe Biden, whose handlers had him appoint her, declared publicly that he was looking for a black woman; i.e., no white people need apply.  Joe Biden is of Irish descent, and I wondered if the irony would have struck him that, 100 years after "No Irish Need Apply" signs were common at job sites, this descendant of legal Irish immigrants put out a race requirement for a Supreme Court appointment.

Of course, Biden had no clue what was going on, so he gets a pass.  Someone made that decision, and Biden just blathered in assent.

So now we have however-many years of a Court with an associate justice whose primary qualification was race. And here is the thing.  Because of Biden's pronouncement that the appointment would be a DEI hire, Jackson will, for the rest of her tenure, be regarded as a DEI hire -- not a standard-issue associate justice, but one who was put on the Court to fill a quota.

Democrats never look at the downstream effects of their actions and, yes, I've written before about that very issue.  With them, it is all about power and votes, and if they think they'll get more votes in the next election by installing a black associate justice, they'll do it, regardless of their actual judicial competence or willingness to apply blind justice.

We are not privy to the internal debates of the Court when discussing cases after oral arguments, but one has to wonder how the other eight justices regard the opinions and inputs of the most junior member of the Court, knowing that she was a classic DEI hire, wasn't the most qualified candidate, just a black female with sufficient experience to get the Senate to confirm her.

The note from Justice Barrett suggests that the rest of the Court has its own concern about what Jackson is even doing on the Court (she actually wrote, to paraphrase, "We will not concern ourselves with Justice Jackson's opinion ...").  So there's that.

But there's also the situation that, to fill a racial quota, there is now a lifetime appointment on the Court of a DEI hire, someone whose opinions are starting to make it clear that her judicial opinions are political, reflecting the signs of protestors more than the history of the interpretations of the Constitution.

I'm not a lawyer, of course, but it is my semi-educated view that the impact of decisions should be only a minor, or even absent, factor in the Supreme Court's consideration.  Laws may have detrimental impact on some people, but if they are Constitutionally sound, it is not for the Court to overturn them. 

Justices like Jackson may have graduated law school, but if they haven't learned the lesson that their politics should not be a factor, certainly not to the extent of allowing impact to affect their assessment of Constitutionally, then Houston, we have a problem.    

And at bottom, every serious black judge in the nation should be concerned that the single outcome of the appointment of Jackson to the Court is to call in question the seriousness and qualification of them as competent members of the judiciary.

DEI strikes again. 

Copyright 2025 by Robert Sutton.  Like what you read here? There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com and, after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around. Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton. 

Obrigado, Amigos Brasileiros!

Obviously I don't write in Portuguese, and as you might guess after reading the last 1,100 or so of these pieces, that's because I don't speak it.  My English is pretty good, though; I've been reading it for almost 72 years and have a pretty good idea from that experience. 

So it is of great interest that, joining my surprising readership in the Netherlands, recently there has been a huge number of readers of this column from Brazil.  And I mean huge.

Sure, I'm immensely grateful that you in the Southern Hemisphere (and the little part of Brazil that pokes above the equator) have been coming here and reading some of my columns here.  But with that gratitude comes an equally great curiosity, my never having been closer than Panama.

Tell me about yourselves!  Are you native Brazilians who enjoy reading the ramblings of a geriatric American with a terribly bizarre life story, to practice your English?  Are you expats living in Rio who share all my political opinions and appreciate the sentiments?

This is just to ask you to get back to me privately (contact information in the notice block below) and assuage my curiosity.  How did you come across the site?  A friend?  A search?  And do you know how the site got so popular in Brazil?  Inquiring minds want to know!

As our president might say, "Thank you for your attention to this matter." 

Copyright 2025 by Robert Sutton.  Like what you read here? There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com and, after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around. Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton. 

 

 

When the War is Actually Over

As I write this, missiles are being exchanged between Iran and Israel, a situation which, despite the lack of ground troops involvement, constitutes a "war."

The exchange is not being done by FedEx or UPS, and we certainly know it's not the US Postal Service, since at least some of the missiles are actually arriving on time. No, the missiles are being launched from hundreds of miles away, using sophisticated guidance systems.

So yes, it is war.  And for the most part, people do not want war and certainly don't enjoy it.  War is heck, to paraphrase General Sherman during the War Between the States.

OK, so no one wants it.  How do we end it?

Well, the first problem is two paragraphs back, in that little disclaimer "for the most part."  There are people who want war, because what they want to accomplish is conquest, and if you want to conquer another nation, as Putin does in Ukraine and the Iranian mullahs do in Israel and, for that matter, the whole Middle East, you need war.  The people you're trying to conquer are not going to roll over, you know.

As I write this, I'm thinking of the old Roman Empire and the legions sent into battle to expand the Empire, and Alexander the Great, and Genghis Khan.  Tons of soldiers sent into battle, hundreds of thousands killed but, for the most part, the borders of all these empires continued to change over the centuries.  Nothing was really permanent, and all those conquerors are dead. Memento mori.

I'm thinking of them, because it seems utterly ludicrous that a couple millennia later, there are still guys out there trying to do the same thing.  Since those old empires, we have implemented indoor plumbing, and electricity, and we can fly.  We actually have free nations without dictators.  Kingdoms have parliaments.  Civilization has advanced far beyond where we were back then.

And yet we still have dictators demanding that they conquer other nations.  We shouldn't have to have huge militaries and sophisticated armaments, given how far we have come in society.  But as the Iranian mullahs show, we haven't all come that far.

President Trump is, as we speak, deciding whether or not, and when, to provide Israel with a bomb capable of taking out what is believed to be the last nuclear bomb-development site in Iran, utterly wiping out the mullahs' ability to develop a nuclear weapon.  

Surely the left will be crying about "diplomacy", and how we just need to talk this through and achieve a negotiated settlement.  But here's the thing.  Much as I'd like to claim that I thought up this quote, it was probably Sun Tzu, or one of that crowd: 

The war is over when your enemy says it's over. 

Got it?  It's not when you think you've defeated them, but when they act in such a way as to concede defeat. Obviously, this is harder when the conqueror himself loses, because their concession of defeat isn't compelling unless they are, well, dead.

The problem isn't "Iran", as far as what is going on there; it is the Iranian leadership.  The people of Iran would be perfectly happy to live in peace with Israel, if only they were allowed to self-govern.  They are an intelligent and reasonably sophisticated people, sitting on enough oil to drive a thriving economy and enough brain power to manage it, if they could only implement a government whose primary objective was the elevation of the economy and the protection of the Persian people.

We wish we had a shred of confidence that a democracy of some sort could arise from the ashes, if the enemy "said the war was over" by being, you know, dead.  If the mullahs were wiped out, could a representative government be developed?

Remember -- the war only ends when the enemy says it's over.  The mullahs are never going to let it be over, let alone say it is, and Israel knows that.

I'm afraid that there has to be a complete wiping out of the leadership there in order to end the war, and someone has to be prepared immediately to create a government consistent with civilized principles before they get more mullahs.

The good news is that peace in the Middle East, an impossible task for centuries, could actually be possible (the rest of the Muslim Middle East has no use for the Iranian leadership either).  The "bad" news is that no one has a clue who's actually around to lead it.

Once, that is, the enemy has said it's over. 

[Update 26 Jun 2025 -- I don't mean to gloat and scream "See, I was right!", nor say "Oops, I was wrong" but, as we saw the past few days, the mullahs indeed did let it be over after the US obliterated their nuclear weapons program. So I was wrong about that, but I will say without gloating that the premise of the piece was actually borne out.  The Iranian version of saying it's over was to call us up, and tell us that they were going to send some face-saving missiles to Al Udeid AB at whatever time we said it was OK, so we could intercept them. So yes, it's over when the enemy says it's over, and the Iranians just proved the point.] 

Copyright 2025 by Robert Sutton.  Like what you read here? There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com and, after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around. Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton. 

Fluffy at the Vanguard

Gabriel Iglesias, as we all know, is a (quite) portly Mexican-American comedian, certainly among the most popular stand-up comics of any genre or characteristic, and the greatest Latino comedian of our generation.

He is commonly known as "Fluffy", as in "I'm not fat, I'm fluffy", and Americans know him well from his comedy specials (recorded stand-up sessions) aired on Netflix.  He has many of these available, and they are funny by any standard of humor.  

His comedy is a storytelling style, vignettes from his life, his family, his touring, and layered over everything is his being Mexican-American, with many asides in Spanish, though quite understandable even for those of us who don't speak the language.  But I don't need to get into it; everyone pretty much knows who Fluffy is.

The state of American comedy is really what this is about.  Fifty years ago, you could do ethnic jokes with relative impunity.  Polish jokes were common and perfectly acceptable, although the same exact joke would be told by Northerners to make fun of Southerners, or Nova Scotians to make fun of Newfies, or Minnesotans and Iowans to make fun of each other.

Then woke-ism happened. It became impossible for a comedian to leverage ethnicity, not his own and certainly not anyone else's, for his humor.  Comedians were kept off college campuses for perceived insensitivity to this or that favored group.  Were he still performing, the now 97-year-old Tom Lehrer would certainly not be getting away with singing "National Brotherhood Week."

At its worst, it took comics of the stature of Jerry Seinfeld and Dave Chappelle to take a courageous stand.  They would point out that comedy is often an art exaggerating the more stereotyped attributes of groups; at the same time the left was making group affinity ultra-important and ranting about "diversity."  

Seinfeld and Chappelle were prominent in pointing out that the protection of such sacred cows would lead to the demise of comedy. They needed to look no further than the pathetic performance of the hosts on most late-night talk shows, who were destroying the Johnny Carson legacy.  Succumbing to the woke mob, and sympathizing with them anyway, their monologues turned into leftist pap, devoid of comedy.

It took a few comedians with "FU money" -- successful enough to be able to say what was actually true without fear of cancellation -- to put a line in the sand and defend the integrity and freedom of comedians to say things that were truly funny, even if they might be a little offensive, and that the offended just needed to grow a pair. 

Ultimately, the revolt against the incompetence of the left, under Joe Biden and whoever was telling him what to do, led to the 4-year delayed re-election of Donald Trump.  Trump, of course, is part entertainer, meaning that his competence blends with a personality contrast with Biden to attract younger supporters.  Those younger Americans had already had enough of unfunny "comedy", particularly political attempted humor. It was pretty hard to be funny talking about now-president Trump when he was making eggs and gasoline affordable again, deporting illegals, and actually answering questions often and honestly.

So it was quite something when "Fluffy" recently released his latest comedy stand-up special, a live stand-up recorded in Miami and available on Netflix.  The something wasn't just that he did an hour-and-twenty-minute routine, far longer than the typical recorded stand-up show.

No, the "something" was that at the very start, Gabriel Iglesias, who is popular enough -- and self-deprecating enough -- to say whatever he wants and tell whatever stories he wants, made a little disclaimer to the huge audience.  He said, in so many words, that his audience should not expect the usual political garbage that most of them weren't going to want to hear.

His stories were going to be about things that were actually funny, and were not going to get half the audience to want to leave.  He was going to be Fluffy, and tell Fluffy stories, and make Fluffy jokes.  No one was going to tell him how he had to think.  No one was going to be able to cancel him.

It was almost ninety minutes of pure funny.  Political correctness was not an issue.

When it was over, and I had a chance to think about it, it was clear that he had indeed been funny as all-get-out without having to be political, just as promised.  And it became equally clear that his disclaimer and the subsequent storytelling were at the vanguard of what is hopefully a new era in comedy -- making jokes and telling stories that are actually funny, without the attendant political crap. 

Fluffy at the vanguard.  Who'd-a thunk it? 

Copyright 2025 by Robert Sutton.  Like what you read here? There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com and, after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around. Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton. 

 

 

Fire Extinguishers, Fives of Clubs, and Five-Irons

The latest kerfuffle in the whole California high school athletics drama took place, not over a boy pretending to be a girl and walking away with an undeserved medal.  It actually was a biological female who won a girls' track race in the selfsame state competition.

She decided that celebrating by hugging her coach and congratulating her competitors, what people with a shred of sportsmanship would do, well, that wasn't good enough.  It wasn't self-congratulatory enough.  It didn't portray the "I am wonderful, look at me, me, me!" message enough.

No, that girl, right after winning, decided to grab a nearby fire extinguisher (which she may have pre-positioned for the event, but I do not know).  She sprayed her feet with the fire extinguisher in celebration of her wonderfulness, to tell the crowd how "hot" her feet were.

The California geniuses who run interscholastic sports there then compounded the idiocy by denying her from receiving her medal for winning the race. They wouldn't dare come down hard on boys pretending to be girls and walking away with undeserved medals, but they pull the medal from a girl for an overzealous, self-indulgent, unsportsmanlike act after the race was over.

Of course, lots of people are screaming about the action being racist (the girl was black), or noting, as I just did, the weird hypocrisy of the California athletic overlords in letting boys win medals in girls' sports.

You see, that's the problem.

We should be talking, not about the punishment she received in being denied an earned medal, but about the poor sportsmanship she showed in showing up her competitors whom she had just defeated.  

Here's the difference: I don't really want (or need) her to be punished.  I simply want her never to do anything so rude again, and I certainly don't want anyone else imitating what she did.

The consequences should be between her and her coach, school, and parents, more than between her and the California interscholastic sports federation.  But let's not talk punishment; let's talk about teaching sportsmanship to athletes who so badly need it.   

For many years, my Best Girl and I have played a Tuesday night card game with a neighbor couple who are close friends.  The game is for teams, and we cycle through the various pairings -- couples teamed up, then the next week guys vs. gals, then cross-spousal teams.

I would say that the games are very competitive, even with no stakes involved other than bragging rights. Losing is not fun, and although the cards may cause irritation, it is never against the opponent but just an expression of frustration.  It would never occur to us to allow our competitiveness to be focused on the opponent.  It's a game of cards, and if you draw a four of clubs instead of a five of clubs, well, that's the luck of the draw.

More importantly, it would be abysmal sportsmanship either to gloat over winning or to step on the losing team.  We simply do not do that.  Making a losing opponent feel bad isn't in our repertoire of acceptable behaviors.

Spraying one's feet with a fire extinguisher may push that line a bit.  If it turns out that she had staged the fire extinguisher herself prior to the race, though, it crosses the line into abysmal sportsmanship.

I would rather she fix her need to express her belief about how wonderful she is.

I'd like for her to take up golf.

Right now, the world of professional golf is dominated by Scottie Scheffler, the young Texan who is not only #1 in the world rankings for many months now, but who has established the biggest computed gap between #1 and #2 in over 20 years, since a fellow named Tiger was markedly the best.   

If the young lady runner were to take the game of golf up with the same diligence with which she turned herself into a winning runner, she would surely learn a few things.

She would observe Scottie Scheffler as he goes around the course in a tournament, focused on his plan for each hole and managing the course. She would observe his calm demeanor, and the way his temperament is so contained regardless of the score on a given hole.

Also importantly, she would observe how he wins. The last putt drops on the 18th hole of the last day, and Scheffler smiles, embraces his caddie, and then shakes the hand of (and often bro-hugs) his opponent playing partner and shakes hand with the other player's caddie.  The handshakes and embraces include kind words for the opponent's play and best wishes for him. He then walks off the green with waves to the crowd, is embraced by his wife, and carries his infant son over to the brief TV interview that follows.

Most of all, the young lady runner would come to realize that all the pros do pretty much the same thing. There is nothing more sportsmanlike than the behavior of professional golfers.  As frustrated as the game may get them, their behavior toward opponents is universally respectful and generous.  They're all playing against the course, not to celebrate another's defeat.  I executed that five-iron shot on #18 and won today, but your day will be tomorrow.

If that wasn't too meandering a tale for you, you'll have seen that what is needed is not punishment, but a lesson in sportsmanship that this young runner -- and many of her generation -- so desperately need.  

She needs to learn to compete the way older card playing neighbors do, with regard for the feelings of the other team and players.

She needs to learn to compete properly at a high level, the way professional golfers respect the work put in by their opponents.

She needs to learn that self-aggrandizing moments are for the self-important in our society.

She can do better.  Let's teach her. 

Copyright 2025 by Robert Sutton.  Like what you read here? There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com and, after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around. Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.

 

Daylight Savings -- Part Two

I hope you got to read the "part one" of this discussion from last December -- if not, here is the link so you can get the idea of where this idea is coming from.

In short, my point was that the Daylight Savings Time concept was unnecessary, and there was no need to change times twice a year with all the logistic challenges and emotional trauma.  The issue, in my view, was that the time zones themselves had been drawn arbitrarily, and with no regard for the actual astronomy involved.

The solution, then, was and is simply to redraw the time zones, such that there are no areas where, on the shortest day of the year, the sun rises absurdly late or sets absurdly early.  To do that, you identify the longitude lines (Pole to Pole) where, on that shortest day, the sunrise and sunset are most closely aligned to, say, a 7:00am to 5:00pm period, mapping to typical workdays.

Those longitude lines then become the center of each time zone, and you extend the time zone east and west of there to where the time zone borders are about halfway between those lines.

So, "part two."

In the previous piece, I explained the logic and threw out an example or two, but didn't map the whole country.  I thought it a good idea to go ahead and finish the argument here in case, you know, an actual congressman with some authority reads this and thinks it's a good idea.

The site that I used before turned out not to be so great as far as placing the sunrise and sunset times, so I did a lot more research before this article.  As it turns out, the astronomical center of what we would call the Eastern time zone is closer to Syracuse, NY than Worcester, MA.  That means that those four longitude borders (the centers of the four time zones) would run vertically, roughly, through Syracuse, and then St. Louis, MO, Denver, CO, and Santa Maria, CA.

We understand that when you create new time zones, you can't just draw a vertical line through the country at the appropriate point to delimit the time zones.  It makes far more sense to use existing logical demographic and political borders -- e.g., state borders -- to make it easier on the populations.

That, if you choose to use state borders wherever possible, would take the Eastern time zone from Maine over to Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, and the Carolinas. Georgia actually should remain Eastern as well, while Florida could split as it does now, with the "panhandle" area west of the metropolitan Tallahassee area being in the Central time zone.

The newly defined Central time zone adds Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, and the rest of Kentucky and Tennessee that weren't already in Central. The other big change is that while the zone's western border includes Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, and Louisiana, it ends there.  The new Mountain time zone, centered east to west in Denver, would take in the Plains states -- the Dakotas, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas, all moving from Central to Mountain.

Pacific time, in the new configuration, would have only Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada and Idaho, with Arizona, Utah and Montana staying in Mountain time.

And here is the part that makes the most sense -- with the realigned time zones, there is no need to do Daylight Savings Time at all; there would just be "Time."  No time changes, no disruption, no emotional trauma.

I urge anyone with influence to consider working on a formal proposal to implement a plan like this.  I guarantee it would go over well, because it is the one plan that does what is needed.

Really.

Copyright 2025 by Robert Sutton.  Like what you read here? There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com and, after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around. Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.

Sinterklaas Kapoentje, Leg Wat in Mijn Schoentje

It may be a bit surprising to some readers of this site that UberThoughtsUSA has a rather wide readership; "wide" meaning "around the world."  It's actually kind of interesting, given that the articles are in English, and outside maybe 3-4 of the ~1100 of them I've written, none are about topics of interest beyond our fair nation's borders.

Yet here we are.

Where "we are" is that for a few weeks now, of the thousands of perusals of articles here the past few weeks, readers from the Netherlands have totaled about three times the readings of all other countries combined, including those from the good old U.S. of A.

It can't be my familiarity with the Dutch tongue.  I titled this piece as I did because the children's Christmas song, referenced there, includes pretty much all the Dutch that I know, and that includes really not knowing what "kapoentje" actually does mean (yes, I do know the rest is about Santa putting little gifts in the child's footwear).

Well, mijn broers en zussen in Holland, it is a pleasure sharing my thoughts and recollections with you. But forgive me if I express my curiosity about what interests Dutch readers in those thoughts and recollections.

If you are among the now-hundreds of readers in the land of tulips, please reach out (contact information below as always).  I'd be honored to hear from you as to your interest in the column.

But please make it in English.  My Dutch, as noted, isn't really very good.

Talk to you soon!

Copyright 2025 by Robert Sutton.  Like what you read here? There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com and, after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around. Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.

My 201(k) and Why I'm OK

If you have been thoughtfully saving an adequate portion of your income by using the various pretax instruments available to Americans -- the 401(k), the IRA, the SEP-IRA, etc., then you are aware of, if not panicked by, the precipitous drops in the various equity investments those plans have been suffering the past week or two.

As we all know, those drops have come as a result of President Trump's fulfillment of a daily campaign promise to level the playing field as far as international trade is concerned.  You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs, as they say, and the president is leveraging the awesome purchasing power of the USA to reach his (and our)goal, i.e., to lower or even remove tariffs imposed by foreign nations on USA exports.

The result, for the moment, is panicked selling of stocks, which has drastically lowered the value of those savings, and driven jokes about people's 401(k)s feeling like "201(k)s."  We get it. 

Not to provide more personal information than necessary, but I'm a full-time employee of a company, I'm in my 70s, and I have been setting aside savings for a long time.  That I haven't seen my savings drop as much as some is a tribute to the foresight of the financial services company I've used for ten years now.  But it has dropped.  And I'm not thrilled about it.

That said, I get it.  I get what President Trump is trying to do, and I support it.  Most of all, I support the idea of blowing up the international tariff and non-monetary rule status quo, one that allows Japan, for example, to export a huge number of cars to the USA while American car makers cannot export any to Japan.  

That's just an example, and there are many, many others. It is astonishing how much higher a tariff percentage had been placed by other countries on USA goods, effectively cutting off their markets to high-quality American products.  

It is equally astonishing to many to discover that it's not even all about tariffs -- the European Union, for example, puts ridiculous standards on some products (autos, for one) for the obvious purpose of keeping our products out -- so even if there were no tariffs on American goods, we still couldn't sell there.

President Trump said just last night, and not for the first time, "Other countries have been ripping us off for 50 years!"  And he is quite right. Foreign markets are often closed to American products, while we go on and import from them.  Our manufacturers here could expand hugely with open foreign market access.

Of course, where all this tumult affects the price of corporate stocks is where we need to focus, since those 401(k) values are a composite of all the stock shares held.  And where cooler heads prevail, we can see that if XYZ Corp. was worth ten dollars a share two weeks ago, its innate value (i.e., its value based on the profitability of the company) didn't suddenly drop; the price dropped because panicked people sold their shares more than other, saner people, were buying them.

What is going to bring the stock prices back to where they were?  Well, there are billions of dollars sitting on the sidelines ready to jump back in to the market -- the dollars those sellers got from panicking and selling their shares.  What they are waiting for are moves by some of the significant foreign trading partners -- Japan, South Korea, the EU, China -- to negotiate tariff and non-monetary trade deals.

Those negotiations are starting as we speak, and let's face it -- those Wall Street types sitting on the sidelines with their investment cash know quite well that Donald Trump is a force in negotiations.  Once the first few countries reach agreements -- maybe even after the first one does -- all that money comes back into the market and the stock prices go back to where they were.

Moreover, the smartest nations are going to be first in line.  The president's son Eric, who has remained with the Trump Organization (the real estate development business) and is not a politician, had a quote a few days ago to that effect.  He would not want to be the last nation to settle a trade deal with his father, he pointed out, noting that "I've seen that movie my whole life."

It will be interesting, for example, when you notice that some nations are responding by putting retaliatory tariffs on American goods exported to them -- but if they've already put non-monetary barriers in so we can't export to them, their threat is a paper tiger. We're already not exporting to them.

I see the coming weeks as being a series of customized deals with the smartest countries, one by one.  I'm betting Japan and South Korea are very early in that process.  And as soon as one of those major players makes a deal -- and by "deal", I mean opening their markets to American goods on the same basis under which we import from them -- the markets spring back to life and return to their former levels.

So my 401(k) is just fine to leave alone and not get all bothered about it.  

It may be a 201(k) for now, but is more likely to be a 501(k) soon enough. 

Copyright 2025 by Robert Sutton.  Like what you read here? There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com and, after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around. Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.

Mr. Trump's Own BCECs

The name of our late, esteemed president, Ronald Reagan, is called to the fore often when discussions of his handling of the issues of his day are held. As a gentleman now in my 70s, simple math will show that Mr. Reagan was a formative presence in my thirties, and his election in 1980 was a memorable event for all of us.

Those too young to remember will have likely not heard the term "BCEC", which rose to prominence during that election, and faded into oblivion shortly after, although it would still have relevance if it were indeed still used.

BCEC stood for "blue collar ethnic Catholics", and referred to Americans of Irish, Italian, Polish and other extractions, generally descended from immigrants of the early 1900s who had been doing blue-collar work for generations.  The implication of that use was that they were generally union members and worked long hours at hard jobs -- trades, mills, factories.

Most relevant, they were Catholic.  Democrats too, of course, because the unions, much like today, supported only Democrats and obliged their members to vote for the candidate of their choice, meaning one who was paid sufficiently to support the legislative agenda of the respective, if not respectable unions.

The BCECs, long before they were so named, notoriously were all the above.  They constituted a solid Democrat voting bloc for decades -- while that was only because of the politics of their unions, it was still a reliable bloc, because the union was in sync with the second most important aspect of their lives -- their jobs.

The problem for Democrats, at least eventually, was the most important aspect of their lives -- the beautiful combination of family, country, and church.  An auto worker in Detroit named Wojciechowski would, as likely as not, have a wife and a half-dozen kids, and reliably attend Mass, along with a bunch of other auto workers named Kelly, Capelli, and ... well, you get the idea.

And that's where the 1980 Reagan campaign comes into the story.

The 1970s were memorable in America, starting with the winding down of the Vietnam war, followed by Watergate and the ultimately resultant election of Jimmy Carter for the great quality of ... OK, for not being Gerald Ford. This led inevitably to the disastrous, inflationary Carter economy and then the Iran hostage crisis -- and for the BCECs, this was an interesting confluence that challenged their ability to provide for their family, and ran up against their innate patriotism.

And then there was the last factor -- as Catholics, the Democrats' comfort with abortion on demand was highly unpopular with their faith and threatened their church's teachings.

The nation at the time was seriously balanced politically -- Richard Nixon had won handily in 1968 and overwhelmingly in 1972, and even as unpopular as Gerald Ford was for having pardoned Nixon to get Watergate off the front pages, in 1976 he had closed the gap by election day to that race being a toss-up that Carter, the Georgian, pulled out only by bringing the entire South.

The 1980 election saw Reagan capitalize on all that, but a key to his overwhelming defeat of Carter was his dramatic improvement, over all his Republican presidential candidate predecessors, in the votes of the BCECs -- so much so that in the latter stages of the polling in 1980, the term was popularized to reflect Reagan's new source of Republican votes.

The point of all that was to note that in 1980, Reagan was able to identify and win over a voting bloc that previously had voted predominantly Democrat.  He won a far bigger share of the BCECs, despite the unions not really rallying behind him, by appealing directly to their core values of family, faith, and country -- the 1980 issues being the economy, abortion, and the Iran hostage crisis.  Reagan, the "Great Communicator", had no trouble making his case on all those issues.

In the 2024 campaign, Donald Trump, in his own way, did the same thing with a different set of voting blocs. During that campaign, "Trump's BCECs" were black and Latino voters, whose votes would go quite strongly to the former president relative to their percentages in previous elections.

It's a bit difficult to get an accurate exit poll since, when black voters have been expected to vote Democrat since forever, and there is significant pressure to vote that way, the 13% who allegedly exit-polled as having voted for Trump is doubtlessly a severe under-count. But regardless, their proportion voting for Trump was clearly higher than in previous elections.

A similar situation applied to Latino voters, a bloc which split relatively equally between Trump and his opponent, Kamala Harris.  Again, Trump's proportion of Latino votes outpaced any previous election and flew in the face of Democrat expectation that his strong opposition to illegal immigration would cost him much of that voting community.

I believe the argument from 1980 comes all the way to 2024 and applies quite well.  The 1980 BCECs, like everyone else in the country, saw the Democrats and disagreed with their positions on issues close to them -- abortion, of course, but also a perception that they were inadequately patriotic, weak overseas, and economically incompetent, spending a buck and a half for every buck of hard-earned taxpayer dollars that were seized from the auto workers and steel mill types.

Come 2024, and sure enough, much like in 1980, the Democrats allowed their furthest-left wing to dominate their policies.  Only this time, those positions were -- I hesitate to say "even further left" -- just loony in the view of Americans.

Even those not as loony ("loony", as in biological males competing in women's sports, which nobody liked) were counterproductive. Opening the southern border was a transparent Democrat strategy to fill up America with presumed eventual Democrat voters -- but one that America saw as allowing drug trafficking, human trafficking and, as it proved out, an influx of hardened criminals and gang members.

For reasons we may never understand, the Democrats running for office embraced those moronic policies, thinking that ... ahhh, I don't know what they were thinking. 

And here is the point.  I see the major shift in black and Latino votes toward Trump as being a combination of two significant factors that hearken back to 1980.  

First, the Democrats allowed themselves to move themselves into utterly silly positions and did not allow internal dissent on them.  They forced their standard-bearer, the presidential candidate, to advocate those positions, or at least in her case, avoid taking questions on them for the whole campaign.  

Some black voters looked at the awful conditions on city streets under Democrat mayors and asked themselves how let gang members pour across open borders was going to make that worse. They asked how even the not otherwise-criminal illegals might be taking jobs away from them. And they didn't like the answer.

Latino voters looked at all that the same way, only on top of all that, they saw Joe Biden's FBI going after Catholic church members, too.  The overwhelmingly Catholic Latino voting bloc didn't like what they saw, and they really didn't like the Democrats' other stances on issues that flat-out contradicted Catholic doctrine.

Second, they started listening to the second coming of the original Great Communicator.  Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump had more than a few differences, but one thing they both could do is speak.  Mr. Trump was able to pack 20,000 people into an assortment of venues and have more standing outside just to be close.  And the more venues he packed, the more black and Latino voters saw other black and Latino voters who supported him -- and it became more, let's say, "acceptable" to vote for him and even to be quoted as doing so.

Sound familiar?  Of course it does.  A Republican candidate was able to peel voters away from a group that had previously voted as a Democrat bloc, by appealing to the issues of their actual daily lives, whether from foreign competitors undercutting US automakers and steel mills to cost jobs here, or assaults on women's sports, or, well, assaults from gang members who walked across unguarded borders.

After the 1980 election, the voter calculus flipped so far that the Democrats couldn't win the White House for 12 years.  The BCEC voter took a long time to be willing to consider voting for a Democrat again, and even then it took a far less radical candidate from a southern state, whose policies would be rejected by the current party.

It remains to be seen the extent to which the black and Latino voter who gave Trump a chance in November will, at the very least, allow themselves to consider Republicans in future elections.  They have broken free of the shackles put on them by their union bosses, their bought-and-paid-for pastors, their self-appointed "leaders." 

How free from those shackles they will be going forward remains to be seen.

But one way or the other, Trump found his BCECs for 2024, and the landscape may never be the same.

Copyright 2025 by Robert Sutton.  Like what you read here? There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com and, after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around. Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.

To My Singaporean Friends

Just a quick note today ...

I am so blessed to have noticed a huge surge in readership in Singapore this week.  There has always been a fairly robust set of readers in Singapore, but it has really ballooned this past week.

If for no other reason than to track the reach and appeal of the column, and to be sure that the posts are of interest to such a large community outside the USA, I encourage you, if you are in Singapore, the Netherlands, or any of the other nations overseas where there is a large readership for the column, please do reach out (contact below and at the side).  Let me know what interests you about previous pieces.

As we all know, there is no limit to the range of topics covered here, so please feel free to reach out. I'd really like to know how you came across the column, and whether you are part of an expatriate community, or native to the country.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Copyright 2025 by Robert Sutton.  Like what you read here? There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com and, after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around. Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.

Maybe Tips Aren't the Priority

I am, of course, a Trump supporter, and so theoretically I support most of what he advocates, and most of what he proposes as solutions to the problems we all agree are the pressing issues of the day.

And I do, even though this column is about my disagreement with the priority of some of the solutions being proposed.

So let us not rush to condemn me for what I am to say, or worse, misinterpret.

I don't see the "No Tax on Tips" campaign promise as being a hill to die on, if it comes to hills and the dying thereupon.

President Trump posited three significant reliefs from taxation when he was Candidate Trump, and we all remember them:

• Removing the Federal tax on tip income
• Removing the Federal tax on Social Security retirement benefits
• Removing the tax on overtime wages
  

Now, I need you to think of the first and third bullets as different from the second.  Whatever one thinks of tips from the perspective of the waiter or caddie or nail technician, the fact remains that their tips are indeed earned income. That is enshrined in the law in the sense that tipped employees are not obligated to be paid minimum wage, the idea being that their primary income is, in fact, their tips.

Whatever argument there may be for not taxing tips, even that argument doesn't apply to taxing overtime.  Overtime labor is labor; it is earned income, and while perhaps there could be a stretchy defense for not taxing the uplift -- i.e., taxing only the "time" part of "time-and-a-half" -- it is earned, and should be subject to taxation.

[I'll remind you -- and myself -- that there really are required functions of government, and therefore the country does indeed need to raise money through taxation to pay for them.  As long as there is an income tax, the points above are valid.]

When it comes to Social Security retirement, however, the above has no bearing.  Although we understand that Social Security is not really the government taking 7% of our income and eventually giving it back to us if we live long enough to retire, conceptually it is quite similar and OK to think of it that way for our purposes.

That money was earned by workers.  It was taken as a tax on earned income at the time of employment and used by the government for whatever it felt like.  It is not invested; not put into an interest-bearing instrument, as we would do ourselves.  Nothing was done to use the money seized from us to dedicate it to our retirement individually, let alone for it to grow.

It is already treated differently from tips and overtime, in that federal tax on Social Security retirement benefits is not done on 100% of the benefit; it is taxed at a percentage of the total amount depending on your other income -- which in itself is inappropriate, given that we're simply given back money taken from us years back and poorly invested on our behalf.

I'm not actually arguing against ceasing taxation on tips or overtime. I'm simply pointing out priorities based on the nature of the earning.

And I strongly advise President Trump, the politics notwithstanding (and understood), to prioritize removing the tax on Social Security retirement first, with the other two pledges kept on an "if possible" basis.

 Arguments welcome.

Copyright 2025 by Robert Sutton.  Like what you read here? There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com and, after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around. Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.

You're Never Fooling Us Again

A decade ago, the former speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, was desperately trying to avoid having people read the draft bill that would implement Obamacare. You remember Obamacare, right?  That's the bill about which Jonathan Gruber, the MIT professor who developed it, said that Americans were too stupid, thank God, to understand that it was a gigantic wealth transfer-cum-Ponzi scheme.

Obamacare got passed and, as a result, my health insurance went from $550 monthly in December 2014 to $1,100 monthly a month later, despite no change in our health.  For that extra $550 a month, all my then-63-year-old wife and I got for health coverage that we didn't already have were maternity and pediatric dentistry, which we obviously didn't need. I'm not kidding.  We were forced to buy maternity coverage for a 63-year-old woman, and pediatric dental coverage for children we didn't have.  You can read about it here.

Mrs. Pelosi was trying to cajole hesitant House members to vote for it without reading the contents.  "You'll have to pass it to find out what's in it", she said. 

You remember.  I remember.  It was the epitome of "I know better than you do what you need.."

But more than that, it was the epitome of Swamp politics.  A few people put that bill together, and no one was given a chance to read it before a vote schedule that was given urgency that didn't exist.  There was absolutely no legitimate reason why Congress could not be given enough time to decide if there were changes that might need to be made.

Then we heard of the attempt by current Speaker Johnson to get a meeting with President Biden a few months ago. The White House delayed for weeks and weeks, and then when they finally conceded and scheduled him on the calendar, the speaker arrived only to be "ambushed", as he put it, by the House and Senate minority leaders, Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer, and the VP, Kamala Harris, all in the room, presumably to make sure no uncomfortable questions were asked.

Ultimately, Biden told the rest to leave, whereupon Speaker Johnson asked him about a policy for which Biden had signed an Executive Order.  Biden replied that he had never signed such an order, whereupon the speaker showed him to his surprise that, indeed, he had.  Biden didn't even agree with the policy of an EO he had actually signed!

It doesn't matter if that instance was because Biden was too demented to remember something he had done, or because the cabal actually running the country was just shoving EOs in front of him and making him sign things he was unaware of.  It doesn't matter.  He was not in charge, and Speaker Johnson realized at the time just how bad it was.

We discovered that the new Secretary, who took over at the Department of Labor in the first Trump term, was told by senior officials there that certain orders could not legally be issued by the Secretary -- orders that would reflect the wishes of the President.  According to law, they most certainly could have been issued, and the Swamp types who advised otherwise knew they were lying. That was undoubtedly repeated at other Departments. 

That BS ended today with the second inauguration of Donald Trump.

I read my Best Girl that Speaker Johnson EO story a few days ago, and we both realized that this was the Wizard of Oz story all over again.  We knew who the "great and powerful Oz" was -- the shell of what once was Joe Biden, pounding his chest that yes, he is running things -- "the best Biden ever", to quote Joe Scarborough -- but with no clue what was actually going on.

What we never found out, and still don't know, was the real mystery -- who was the little guy behind the curtain pulling all the strings?  Who was writing those bills?  Who was drafting Executive Orders and shoving them under Biden's insensate nose to sign?  Schumer and Jeffries and Kamala obviously know, but the rest of us maybe ought to, don't you think?

Well, Donald Trump is president now, and there is no doubt that the visible power and the actual power are the same person.

I do not expect him to be seeking to prosecute the Swamp types; he has committed not to use the Justice Department to go after political opponents and we should believe him -- not because Biden pardoned them on his way out the door, but because Trump said he wouldn't and he is believable in that.

But sunshine is the best disinfectant. Congress has the power to hold hearings, and with no expectation of their prosecution (save for perjury in those hearings, which would not fall under the pardons), committees should drag in Biden after Biden, Swamp creature after Swamp creature, and force testimony on who exactly was in charge, what they did, and who wrote the EOs that Biden signed.

Let us let Congress do its oversight and investigative jobs. Its committees can expose who is responsible for the Biden Administration and, for that matter, the Obama Administration, for decisions that have put the country in such a precarious position.

Because the USA will then know what Democrats do when they're allowed to, and will never let them near the levers of power for a long, long time.  

They have run unethically, fixed elections unethically, run Government unethically, and put a demented old man in office.  They propped him up for four years, despite his such obvious infirmity that the special prosecutor investigating his family's sale of influence to China ruled that he couldn't stand trial because a jury would see him sympathetically as just a forgetful old man.

Our good fortune is that those mystical people running things were so committed to their leftist agenda that they put a VP in who had no qualification or accomplishments, but was the "right" color and gender to check boxes.  Our further good fortune was that her skills were so obviously negligible that she was verbally unable to do interviews or press conferences, while Trump was answering anything and everything and talking to anyone and everyone.

The Democrats have always had to use smoke and mirrors, because their policies don't work and never have.  It took no time at all for Biden to blow up the economy in an inflationary mess.  We could all see that;  Eventually it became obvious whose policies were responsible.

We can look forward to four years of the President saying what he means and doing what he says he will do. At the end of his term, we can judge Mr. Trump and the Republicans on what they have accomplished, and can decide accordingly going forward.  But they won't be trying to fool anyone. They'll be doing what they think they should do for the country. 

The Democrats have been trying to fool us for more than a decade.  Some of us saw through them then, but all of us see it now.

You're never, never fooling us again.

Copyright 2025 by Robert Sutton.  Like what you read here? There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com and, after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around. Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.