Here We Go Again

It is 2022, but you’d be forgiven for thinking we are in a 2021 loop. The major headlines as we start the year are about COVID and January 6th. The former does not help the Democrats and the latter does not help them, but the media thinks it does. I’ll have more to say on that one later this week.

Now, going into this, know I still am battling a concussion. It is so weird. Last night, I had friends over to hang out on the front porch. I could pass a lie detector test attesting that one of the guys who was there was not there. My memory of getting hit by the golf club has fully returned, but the hospital is still not there. Every day since has been better and better, but by the end of each day my brain is tired and more forgetful. All that being said, we’re back to work. I’m back on radio today (this’ll be interesting). And we’re not in campaign season whether we want to be or not.

The first primaries are coming up soon. Republicans should retake the House just based on redistricting. They have been surprisingly smart nationwide compared to Democrats. Republicans have given up a few seats to ensure that, demographically, in a decade they should still be in charge. Democrats have gone for broke in places like Illinois and New Mexico with their redistricting. The net effect is that they may hold on for two to four years, but lose those seats before the next round of redistricting in 2031.

Additionally, some of the seats the Democrats have drawn nationwide are such narrow wins for Biden that a non-Trump Republican could do well in them. As we saw in Virginia this past year, making your polling and turnout model calculations based on Trump v. Biden is foolish. But Democrats are doing that.

Now, as the year gets started, there are a few things that we should consider.

COVID

It is time to go back to normal. Omicron is leaving the vaccinated with a cold or mild flu for the most part. To the extent hospitals are being flooded, they are being flooded with unvaccinated people. The vaccinated are holding up quite well. It is time to go back to normal.

Schools that are going remote need to be fought unless their remoteness is due to teachers being sick. This is a reality we should be sympathetic too, but we should not let fear govern.

CRIME

It is still an issue. The crime wave has not stopped. No one wants to talk about the Chicago shootings, but there were over 800 last year. Democrats have given up on it and scream racism if you talk about it. This is going to continue to be a big issue.

ECONOMICS

I went grocery shopping yesterday. As an aside, fluorescent lights at the grocery store do a number on me right now. Wow. Anyway, there was no chicken. There was frozen chicken. But the refrigerated section where you find all the chicken was completely empty. There were no sports drinks like Gatorade. There were no frozen potato products.

I paid over $40 the other day for a brisket that should have been around $25. Then the temperature probe on my smoker broke and I burned the darn thing. Beef prices are absurd.

Inflation is going to stay around for a while and the Democrats have no plans to deal with it. Gas prices are coming down, but other prices are not. This is not transitory. It is a story that, like the others, will not go away.

CHINA, RUSSIA, AND IRAN

These three continue to stretch their legs and take advantage of Biden. Every day, the world is a little more unstable because the United States not only isn’t leading but can’t lead. We don’t have the money to invest in our military. China is doing to us what we did to the Soviet Union. No one in Washington seems to care on either side of the aisle. The Russians are being more provocative in Europe and Iran is funding more terrorism. Joe Biden doesn’t have a plan.

2022

Moving forward, so much of what we dealt with in the last year to two years continues to churn up. During much of the Trump Administration, the headlines churned up every week. A news story on Monday was forgotten by Thursday. Now, the headlines won’t go away. They fester. This is bad news for Biden because they are all on his watch, all negative, and all show him as inept. Afghanistan’s failures now provide presupposition for interpreting everything else.

This is going to be an interesting year that will undoubtedly end with a GOP wave that Democrats and the press refuse to recognize, claiming voter suppression. But let me tell you about January 6th… 🙄