Next Monday Donald Trump will be inaugurated as our 47th President.  Of course, he also was our 45th President.  A couple of weeks ago, I explored the significance of non-consecutive presidential terms.  Grover Cleveland, also from New York, but with ties to New Jersey where he was born, was our 22nd and 24th President, having been elected in 1884 and again in 1892.

Politics in the 19th and even 20th Centuries was very different than today’s political landscape.  Back then, it was easier for a candidate who had lost a presidential election to be renominated for another run.  William Jennings Bryan got three chances as the Democrat nominee in 1896, 1900, and 1908.  Bryan was trounced every time.

Adlai Stevenson was chosen to run against Eisenhower in 1952 and again in 1956.  Both times, Stevenson was soundly beaten by Ike.  The point is that second chances are rare, especially nowadays, making Trump’s return as President No. 47 all the more amazing.  Of course, Trump did have a lot of help.

Democrats did absolutely everything they could to piss off the American electorate, to the point where it wanted a change so badly that it overlooked the facts that Trump was impeached twice, four times indicted, once convicted, and was being defamed 24 hours a day as an unfit, fascist, Nazi, Hitler-like, crazy, anti-Semitic, piece of garbage, who was an existential threat to democracy.  They resoundingly reelected him anyway.  Against that backdrop, what Democrats were offering had to be crap so pungent that even the voters who don’t pay attention couldn’t avoid the stink.

That said, Trump won and will be President 47.  As I have been over the pertinent ground before, and I am on vacation this week, I thought we could have some fun with the Number 47.

Number 47 is a prime number.  47 is the atomic number of silver, and the atomic weight of titanium.  So, valuable and extremely durable.  That pretty much describes Trump.

The number 47 is also a Carol number and a Lucas Number, but I stunk at math so I don’t have a clue what that means.

In the field of numerology, which endeavors to connect numbers to spirituality, 47 is quite important.  It is comprised of the number 4, which stands for stability, practicality, and a strong foundation; and the number 7, which denotes spirituality and inner wisdom.  Not a bad combination for a president.

The number 47 is considered a sign of personal transformation and divine timing.  It appears when significant events or opportunities are about to happen.  Assuming those events are positive, that may bode well.

Another connection.  The band, New Found Glory, has an album entitled “Not Without a Fight.”  One of the songs on the album is “47.”  That sure sounds like Trump.

Of course, Trump was number 45 before being 47.  The number 45 is a number of leadership, being connected to CEO’s who believe they can exercise control over everything.  That sure sounds like Trump 45 to me.

The number 47 appears frequently in our popular culture.  The Japanese legend of the 47 Ronin is a tale of loyalty and vengeance.  Once again, that sure sounds like Trump.

47 popped up frequently in Star Trek – The Next Generation.  The reason most often given for the recurrences of 47 on Star Trek is that one of the writers, Joe Menosky, was a graduate of Pomona College in California.

It seems that 47 is a mystical number for Pomona alums.  There were 47 graduates in the first class in 1894.  There are 47 pipes in the college organ.  And the college is off of exit 47 of the San Bernardino Freeway.  Anyway, Pomona grads are obsessed by the number 47, which they claim as their own, even positing a theory that all numbers are equal to 47.

Once again, I stunk at math, but that one sure sounds a lot like the old Abbott and Costello sketch, where Lou proved that 7 times 13 equaled 28.  Don’t take my word for it. See below Note -don’t click the “x” that pops up).

One more sweet result of Trump’s 2024 election is the angst it is causing delicate snowflake Pomona College alums.  Many are scraping their “47” stickers from their car windshields, so as not to give the impression that they actually voted for Trump.  One more indication of Progressive brain damage.  Runaway inflation, illegal alien invasion, and the prospect of global war didn’t bother them a bit, but to be connected with Trump?  That was a bridge too far.

The lesson to be learned from number 47 is that it’s namesake (Trump) is apt to be more introspective, and to exhibit personal transformation and growth.  Maybe the number will usher in a change in the Donald, and prevent him from getting off topic and wasting time on needless vendettas.

A bit of personal restraint and change will do him good.  As for the disloyal opposition Democrat cabal, only a slight change will be necessary.  Maxine Waters will have to change “Impeach 45” to “Impeach 47.  Otherwise, they’re good to go.

As this is written, the Congress has just finished certifying the presidential election results.  Vice President Que Mala Harris presided over the proceeding, during which she was obliged to report that she had lost the election to Donald Trump, 312 electoral votes to 226.  To her credit, Que Mala got through it.

I was glad to see that the American electorate took Que Mala’s advice in November.  She ran what she called a campaign of joy, and kept exhorting voters, complete with sign language-like gesticulations, to “Turn the page.”  And turn the page they did.

The voters gleefully turned the page, turning away from the senility, inflation, illegal alien invasion, violent crime in the streets, DEI, transgender travesties, lawfare, ruinous energy policies, suppression of free speech, and incompetence which was the Biden Administration.

And for the first time since 1989, Democrats did not attempt to challenge the result of a presidential election in which a Republican was victorious.  I’m sure their neglect to raise a challenge wasn’t because they learned their lesson, and have finally accepted the fact that their eight year campaign to destroy Donald Trump has failed.  Nor was it because they truly have accepted the result of the 2024 election.  To paraphrase Winston Churchill, everything Democrat is a ploy, wrapped in a distraction, inside a trap.

The Democrat resistance hasn’t gone away.  Much like the Japanese troops on Iwo Jima, they are hiding in caves, waiting for the Trump Administration to come ashore, and they will attack when they think they can do the most damage.

As for Election Certification Day, the Left contented itself with the fact that it occurred on January 6, giving them another opportunity to try to gin up their phony “insurrection” meme once again.  I say “try” to gin up because CNN’s own polling this week revealed that only 5% of voters consider January 6, 2021 to be the number one memory of Trump 45.  This group is comprised of mental patients, elected Democrats (that’s redundant), Adam Kinzinger, Liz Cheney, Mike Pence, and most of the population of Manhattan.

According to CNN, only 37% of voters blame Trump for the January 6th protests.  This group voted for Que Mala Harris, and you saw what that got them.  But regardless of its own polling, CNN commentators tried to stir the January 6th pot once more.

CNN’s Jim Acosta (remember him?) got into it with Republican strategist Brad Todd.  Todd conceded that January 6th was a stain on Trump’s legacy, but dared to criticize Democrat attempts, legal and extra-legal, to defame, incarcerate, and remove Trump from election ballots, as well as the phony House January 6th Committee.

When Todd said Republicans were prohibited from choosing the Republican members of the Committee, Acosta bristled.  As you may recall, Nancy Pelosi rejected the Republican appointees, unilaterally replacing them with, now former, members Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney.  The argument devolved into Acosta repeatedly chanting, “Liz Cheney, good Republican” “Liz Cheney, good Republican,” much as he was talking to a pet, “Good dog.”  As with all Leftist ideologues, Acosta believes the only “good Republican” is a traitor.

As it turned out, the Jim Acosta January 6th reaction was rather tame.  Proving that Trump Derangement Syndrome still exists, and that disorders of the mind remain rampant in the Democrat Party, we must once again consider the ravings of one of the denizens of ABC’s morning contribution to mental illness, The Herd, no wait, I think they renamed it The View.

On January 6 2025, a person who I’m sad to say is considered to be an ABC “legal analyst,” one Sunny Hostin,  declared that January 6th is never to be forgotten, because it was “an atrocity,” which she compared to “World War II, the Holocaust, and chattel slavery.”  She’s sure got her priorities right.  After all, World War II killed some 50 million people, the Holocaust killed over 10 million, millions of Africans were enslaved for hundreds of years, and on January 6 2021, one fat lazy cop shot and killed an unarmed Air Force veteran, the only fatality in the incident.

All of which is just more proof that the gargoyles of The View are misnamed.  They have a Whoopi, a Sunny and a Joy.  Given their dispositions, they should be named Crazy, Dopey and Bitchy.

But January 6th aside, the expectation is building for the January 20 inauguration, and there are speculations as to Trump’s Day One agenda.  Breitbart’s Nick Gilbertson suggests that Day One will feature many pardons for January 6, 2021 defendants, some of whom continue to languish in the D.C. Jail Hellhole.

Trump has indicated that he’s not anticipating blanket pardons for all defendants, which is a good thing.  He should deny relief to anyone who caused damage, stole something, or put his hands on a cop.  All the rest were trespassers at worst.  They deserve relief.

Another Day One action will be the closing of the border, and the start of deportations.  Democrats can bitch and moan all they want, but there is no excuse for failing to deport the 500,000 convicted criminals Biden stupidly admitted.  Nor is there any legitimate reason to try to prevent the deportation of the 1.5 million or so supposed asylum seekers who had their court hearings and have been ordered removed by a federal judge.

Trump also has pledged that he will unleash U.S. energy production, vowing to “drill baby, drill.”  He will issue Executive Orders and rescind Biden Administration actions that prevented oil and gas production.  Saboteur to the very end, Corrupt Demented Imbecile Joe Biden this week invoked a 1953 law to unilaterally ban all oil production off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.  Trump will have to find a way around this roadblock.

Whatever happens on January 20, there is no doubt that Americans are itching to “Turn the page,” and the incoming Trump Administration is itching to get it’s chief officers confirmed so it can get to work.  It turns out Que Mala was right after all.  That feeling of joy can’t be denied.

As the saying goes, when everybody tells you that you’re dead, you should lie down.  The recent election sent a clear message to the Left, but they haven’t received it.  The election of Donald Trump to a second term as president should have convinced the loony Socialist Democrats and the denizens of the lap dog media that Democrats are on the wrong track, but it didn’t.

In one sense, the Trump victory wasn’t surprising, given the fact that Democrats went out of their way to make every aspect of life in the United States worse for working people who are struggling to get by.

Biden and company were handed a secure border.  Their opposition to a border wall aside, they easily could have increased the admission of immigrants in a sane and sensible way.  Instead, they simply erased the borders, and admitted millions of illegal aliens, without regard for identity, medical condition, or criminal history.

The result was an influx of needy illegals, whose numbers included 500,000 known convicted criminals, including 13,000 murderers and 16,000 sex offenders.  Biden and Party supplied them with hotels, food, phones, air travel, health care and education, at your expense.  And when Latin American gangs took over apartment buildings, displacing and assaulting Americans, Democrats told us it wasn’t really happening.

Biden was handed an America with energy independence, for the first time in some 70 years.  He cancelled pipelines and oil and gas leases, and doubled the cost of energy.  Then he promised to destroy the oil and gas industry and tried to mandate electric vehicles that nobody wants and which the power grid can’t support.

Biden then spent trillions of dollars we haven’t got, which spiked inflation to levels not seen in 50 years.  As the price of food soared, they told us prices really were going down.  As Americans found it difficult, if not impossible, to provide for their families, Biden poured billions into Ukraine, and spent billions on illegal aliens.

Leftist culture was just one more brick on the load.  Mindless fealty to DEI, and catering to transgender politics that sanctioned biological men competing in women’s sports, drove a wedge between the Democrats and large sections of their base that may never be healed.

The first duty of government is to keep people safe on the streets and in their homes.  With crime becoming rampant due to Democrat “defund the police” programs and Soros prosecutors, all Democrats had to offer a scared public was the notion that there was only “as perception” of increased crime because crime rates really were down.  This was cold comfort for a public being bombarded with daily reports of murder, rape, robbery, organized looting, and subway immolation.

Simply put, the Democrats’ obsession with the “progressive” nonsense of identity politics could be called anti-utilitarian, as they pursued the greatest good for the smallest number.  For instance, by prioritizing the welfare of illegal aliens over U.S. citizens, they alienated large portions of their black and Hispanic base.

Enter Donald Trump.  They call him a populist.  He is merely a throwback to the philosophy of the only other president who was elected to two non-consecutive terms, Grover Cleveland.  Cleveland said that “public service is a public trust.”  What that means is that our elected representatives should act to carry out the will of their constituents.

It’s only because the politicians ignored the public and thwarted its will that Trump could be elected in 2016.  The politicians in both Parties who lament Trump’s emergence have only themselves to blame.  Had they paid attention to public opinion all those years, there would be no President Trump.

The malfeasance, misfeasance, utter stupidity, and senility of Joe Biden assured Trump’s reelection.  After royally screwing up everything they touched, Democrats realized that old Joe had to go, but replaced him with a worthless dolt who managed to promise only more of the same.

Que Mala Harris ran a putrid campaign.  She managed to spend some $2 billion, much of it going to campaign managers and celebrities who had to be paid to endorse her.  She made few appearances, and answered few questions.  In what everyone understood to be a change election, she promised not to change a thing.

And here’s the funny part.  After losing, in what amounts to a modern day landslide, and leaving the House and Senate in the hands of Republicans, Democrats are still convinced that their problem was “messaging.”  A number of Democrat pundits keep telling us that the main thing that the Democrats need to do is to get their messaging right.

What they mean by that is that, if only Democrats had expressed themselves properly, then the American electorate would have flocked to the Democrat brand, because they would have then understood that runaway inflation is a positive thing.  The influx of 12 million illegal aliens who take your jobs, displace you from your home, use up public funds that could be supporting Americans, and increase your risk of becoming a crime victim is a good thing.  Having biological men ruin women’s sports is a positive.  And it is possible for men to become pregnant.

In a word, Democrats are delusional.  They still don’t get it, and I, for one, am hopeful that they never will get it.  Their problem wasn’t their message.  It was their product.  They were trying to force on the American public a product that it doesn’t want and doesn’t agree with.

You may be able to fool some of the people some of the time, but you can’t continually tell the public it’s stupid and expect to be rewarded.  And that’s exactly what Democrats took from the last election.  Democrat apologists like Don Lemon are telling the few viewers they have left that anyone who voted for Trump is just stupid.  The hateful Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post says that, if the Trump voters had only read The Post, they would have understood the truth, but the problem was that Trump voters can’t read.

Democrats still haven’t figured out that demonizing the opposition doesn’t work.  They have called Republican voters a basket of deplorables, fascist, Nazi, garbage, and racist.  And, if anything, they should be on notice that the “racist” label is false, since Trump owes his 2024 election to black, Hispanic and Muslim voters who abandoned the Democrat Party.

As this is written, Democrats in Blue States are doubling down on stupid, vowing to resist all things Trump, including the deportation of criminal aliens, and aliens who have been ordered removed by federal courts.  Let’s hope they remain true to their Woke principles, and thus easier to defeat.

We’ve reached the end of another year.  As we await the inauguration of Donald Trump on January 20, I thought that we should examine the history of presidential politics in order to fully appreciate the magnitude of what is the greatest political comeback in the history of our nation.

Going back to his first victory in 2016, Donald Trump already was defying the odds and making history.  The 2016 election was the first since 1944 (Roosevelt-Dewey) where both candidates were from the same State (New York).  That also happened in 1920 and 1940. It happened for the first time in 1860 (Lincoln-Douglas).  After that 1860 election we had a Civil War, which is close to what occurred after Trump’s first victory.

Winning your home State when you run for president ordinarily is a must.  Just ask Al Gore, who would have been elected in 2000 had he won his State of Tennessee.  2016 also was the first time in 100 years that the winning candidate lost his own State and won the presidency.  Woodrow Wilson had done it in 1916.  Add Trump to that list.

Of course, Trump lost the 2020 election due to a combination of the Wuhan plague and mail ballot fraud.  Anyone who thinks Corrupt Demented Imbecile Joe Biden really got 81 million votes after being quarantined in his basement, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.  But Biden won, and Trump was out in the wilderness.

Democrats were content to leave Trump in the wilderness until 2022, when he announced that he was running again.  At that point, the Democrat Party, the “Party of the People,” that bastion of respect for democracy, and arbiter of all things pure and holy, sprung into action.

They already had impeached Trump twice, spied on his campaign and set his own Justice Department against him as president.  That hadn’t worked, so in the spirit of fairness, justice and propriety, they had him indicted four times, and perverted the law to attempt to bankrupt him.

They were doing a pretty good job with that, only whatever they did to him, it seemed to make Trump stronger.  Clearly, more stringent measures were warranted.  They knew that the Iranians were actively trying to kill Trump, Mike Pompeo and John Bolton (no loss there), so purely coincidentally, somebody decided to have the Secret Service deny Trump basic security coverage for his rallies.

Instead of members of the Secret Service protection detail, random Secret Service officers, unfamiliar with the protection protocols, and local officers who lacked the ability to communicate with the Secret Service people were assigned to Trump’s protection, including one woman who brought her infant to work to be breast fed.

The result was two assassination attempts, one of which resulted in Trump’s being shot in the ear.  The second attempt, at the Trump golf course in Palm Beach, was another insult to common sense which easily could have been avoided.

The would be assassin, for some 12 hours, sat in an area well known to the Secret Service as a spot from which one could look out onto the golf course.  There were no sweeps of the perimeter fence.  For that matter, I have a cousin who in one day could have raised the level of the fence and inserted metal slats that would have blocked all view from behind the fence onto the course.  None of that was done, and Trump again was placed in jeopardy.

Move on to the 2024 election.  This marked only the second time in our history that a president who was defeated came  back to win a second, non-consecutive term.  Grover Cleveland was elected in 1884, defeated in 1888, and elected again in 1892, to become the 22d and 24th presidents.

There are some parallels between Cleveland and Trump.  Both were from New York.  Both times Cleveland was elected, he got less than 50% of the vote.  Both Cleveland and Trump won close elections the first time, lost close elections the second time, and then won by a large margin in their third attempts.

Cleveland lost in 1888 because he lost his home State of New York.  Shades of Al Gore in 2000.  In the Cleveland elections, as in the Trump elections, the issue of high tariffs was important.  The difference was that Cleveland’s opposition to high tariffs cost him the 1888 election, while Trump’s promise of high tariffs carried him to victory.

Donald Trump is considered to be a Populist candidate, but  Populism is hardly a new concept in American politics.  In the 1892 election, which Cleveland won, a Populist candidate, James Weaver, actually won four States (Colorado, Idaho, Nevada and Kansas).  Weaver did poorly in the South, however, due to Democrat Party intimidation of voters and election fraud. (Some things never change, do they?)

Fast forward to 2024, and Trump won 31 States to 19 for Que Mala Harris.  Purely by coincidence of course, the States Harris won were those where no identification is required for voting, and where votes are counted from November into December.   In any event, Trump won and now will be the 45th and 47th presidents.

History aside, there is reason to have hope that the chaos and insanity of the last four years will be replaced with a return to normalcy and common sense.  Already there are signs that the Woke fever dream is coming to an end.  The mania for DEI, defunding the police, and flaunting the law has been curtailed.

Trump 47 has a plan in place to secure the border and begin to deport the alien criminals that Biden set loose to prey on Americans.  Some Blue State governors are pledging resistance, but they will soon be ground under the wheels of Tom Homan’s ICE juggernaut.

Best of all, even the 24/7 slander and lie campaign of the lap dog media failed to stop Trump from being reelected.  CNN is in shambles, having lost half its already minuscule audience.  MSNBC has suffered a similar fate.  Layoffs and pay cuts are afflicting the lying Left commentators.  ABC even had to settle a libel suit with Trump, paying him some $16 million for George Stephanopolous slanders.

Stephanopolous is said to be incensed over the settlement.  Here’s some advice George.  When you announce (10 times) that a person has been convicted of a crime he did not commit, that’s called defamation per se.  The only issue to be determined is how much you need to pay.  ABC did the right thing.  Had the damage award been set by a Florida jury, Trump would own a good part of Disney.

So let’s hope that the Trump victory will lead to more balanced reporting, and a calmer, saner nation.  One parallel Trump needs to avoid with Grover Cleveland is his fate after reelection.  After being inaugurated in 1893, Cleveland was hit with the Panic of 1893, a near depression that roiled financial markets and ruined the economy.  Hopefully the DOGE boys can avoid a 2025 recession.

January 20 is coming.  Get your popcorn ready.

We are days away from Christmas, so I thought  a Christmas themed offering would be in order for this week’s edition.  It’s a busy time of year, so I’ll make this short and sweet.

In 1905, the author O Henry wrote his short story The Gift of the Magi.  The story has been popular ever since.  The moral of the story has been used in dozens of adaptations on film, on stage and on television, by the likes of The Honeymooners, Mickey Mouse, The Rugrats, Sesame Street’s Bert and Ernie, and The Simpsons.

In O Henry’s story, a married couple, Jim and Della, each sacrifice their most prized possession to raise money to buy Christmas gifts.  Della sells her hair to buy Jim a watch fob.  Jim sells his watch to buy Della a set of combs.  The moral of the story is one of love and selflessness.

It occurred to me that America has recently received the Gift of the MAGA.  And that gift has come not a moment too soon. Donald Trump has sacrificed his most precious possessions in order to straighten out the ungodly mess that has been wrought by Corrupt Demented Imbecile Joe Biden and his perverted Woke henchmen (or should that be henchpersons?)

Like the protagonists in O Henry’s story, Trump sacrificed much – for love of country.  He sacrificed his fortune.  Staying involved in politics exposed Trump to incessant lawfare, State and federal.  New York changed its statute of limitations for the specific purpose of permitting E. Jean Carroll to file suit against Trump for alleged sexual abuse sometime in 1996.  She couldn’t, or wouldn’t, say what day in 1996, as that may have permitted Trump to use his scheduling calendars to prove he was in Atlantic City, or Timbuktu, at the time.  Trump was ordered to pay her $88 million.

New York AG Letitia James sued Trump’s company on a fantastical theory that the Trump Organization overvalued its assets, which she alleged was fraud.  Of course, no one lost any money.  The banks that made loans performed their own appraisals, and no witness claimed to have been deceived.  Somehow, in a case where every fact was disputed, the judge granted summary judgment, and ordered Trump to pay $500 million.

Trump also sacrificed his reputation to stay in public life.  He was the King of New York, on every celebrity A-list.  He was a television star, fawned on by the very networks and commentators who later took to calling him, fascist, racist, Hitler.  Trump is a man who basks in acclaim.  He gave all that up out of a sense of duty.

Trump also put his freedom at risk.  Indicted four times, he risked spending the rest of his life in prison.  He didn’t have to do it.  He could simply have gone away and played golf at age 78, and they would have left him alone.  He was convicted in a farcical fraudulent business records case in Manhattan.  The judge delayed sentencing a number of times.  Although the trial included evidence of acts Trump took as President, and although the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that presidents have broad immunity, the prick judge in New York has refused to dismiss the case, and intends to hold it over Trump’s head for four years.  Although the case is bogus, and filled with reversible error, Trump can’t appeal until he’s sentenced.

The point is that Donald Trump gave up a lot to continue to run for office.  He’s gone through spying on his campaign by the FBI and CIA, unjustified criminal investigations, the targeting of his family and anyone close to him who might help him.  Unceasing lies and character assassination from the media.  He didn’t have to put up with it.  His legacy was set.  He could have lived out his life in luxury, regardless of whether the Democrats destroyed the economy.  But he couldn’t stand idly by.

So during this joyous Holiday season, all of us are receiving the greatest gift of all, the Gift of the MAGA.  It is the gift of sanity over insanity.  It is the gift of fiscal prudence over profligacy.  It is the gift of normalcy over abnormality.  It is the gift of order over lawlessness.  And most importantly, it is the gift of hope for the future over the prospect of failure and despair.  Merry Christmas.