Don't believe anything

With a presidential election coming, you should max out your skepticism.
No matter how good a politician's promises sound, he -- or she -- probably is lying.
The classic example of this is St. Franklin of Roosevelt, the liberal icon.
When he ran for president in 1932, he lambasted Herbert Hoover, saying that he was making the Depression worse by heavy-handed government intervention.
He was right!
Hoover and Congress, primarily through the disastrous Smoot-Hawley tariffs, turned a recession into a depression.
It was not the fall of the stock market because of speculation that caused the Depression, as most liberal history books teach.
There was not much speculation, and stupid Fed policy was the main cause of the market crash of 1929.
But, back to FDR. Not only did he correctly characterize Hoover's actions, he promised the correct remedies, vowing to slash taxes and spending.
Immediately after being elected on this sound platform, he began increasing government intervention, raising taxes and increasing spending.
The Depression worsened and continued until World War II began, Even though FDR had abandoned most of his first-term programs, during his second term he replaced them with equally bad policy.
In short, vote for someone you can believe and hope for the best.

Sears and robot

Sears once was a great American company.
I don't know what happened. Competition has beat them down although they still sell some good merchandise.
But, as I learned the hard way this week, you should not rely on them for repairs.
I have an old Kenmore vacuum. It still works well, but it needed a filer, light bulb and new wheels. So I ordered them online from Sears.
Those few small parts cost $100. I should have known right then I was in trouble.
Light bulb and filter were no problem.
But when I looked at the two plastic wheels I discovered they didn't have any recognizable way to remove them.
The vacuum manual, which I had, was no help.
Calls to Sears for repair instructions were fruitless. A series of emails resulted in them telling me to take a hammer and smash the old wheels then "snap the new ones on." Ridiculous. They don't snap on. They slide onto an axle, but something has to hold them on the axle.
They didn't tell me that, nor had they sent me the two little nuts or washers to hold the wheels.
Every time I asked, they kept hinting that I should take it to a Sears repair shop.
So I called the local Sears repair.
I got a phone robot, which switched me to some guy in New Jersey. He gave me the phone number for the local shop that I had just called.
I called back, the bot switched me again. This time to Texas.
She got someone at the local store on the line and connected me. It was the wrong place. After being switched twice, I got a repair guy.
He told me that if I brought in the vacuum, they should ship it to Orlando. Two weeks later, at a cost of $125, I would have it back.
So replacing two little wheels, a bulb and a filter would wind up costing me about $250 -- more than the entire damn machine did when I bought it new.
All because they couldn't send me 25 cents worth of nuts and washers with the parts and simple instructions to replace the wheels.
When I bitched, the guy says if I would bring the vacuum and wheels in, he would "try" to help me.
I finally went to Lowe's, found two little lock nuts for $1.86 and got them on by myself, saving two weeks and $123.14.
No wonder we now live in a throwaway society.

The harm they do

I don't buy or read the morning paper but someone sent me a clipping of a piece by someone named Frank Denton. It was so purely, hopelessly, mindlessly, liberal that it provokes response.
Because the paper is now behind a paywall, I won't link to it, and no one should take the time too look it up. Trust me when I say it is the same drivel you read every day in the liberal media and see on network news.
The idea is that black Americans are the victims of racist white America -- including Jacksonville residents, of course. One neat refinement is that white Americans don't even realize they are being racist.
The only proof of the alleged racism is disparity in outcomes. This is so preposterous that I'm amazed anyone would try to perpetrate it.
Liberalism demands victims because the whole philosophy is that America is unfair and only bigger, more expensive, more intrusive government can level the playing field.
(Note that the only solution Denton offers to the "problem" is more "public investment.")
I will link to this because it refutes the idea better than I can. Having recently read the author's book, which is referenced in the article, I can attest it is spot on point, and demolishes Denton's fantasy.
But it does reflect the thinking of the majority of those in the newsroom at the paper, believe me. All of the "news" stories reflect the Denton-led editorial opinions as well. That is one reason the paper's circulation has plummeted.
As Riley explained, liberals may be well intended, but that does not excuse the harm they do, or the resentment they cause among Americans whose skin is black and who are fed up with the condescending treatment by liberals.