The Audacity of Taxing and Spending

President Obama announced his 2013 proposed budget last week calling for about $2 trillion dollars in tax hikes and fees. In fairness it also includes some new tax cuts and credits for some which would lower that total to roughly $1.5 trillion – not much if you say it fast.

The orgy of profligate government spending during the last two presidential administrations continues unabated under this budget, and to keep it going strong, taxes will be drastically increased for successful individuals while any spending cuts here will be more than offset by more spending there.

Remember the Bush tax cuts? You know; the ones that did nothing whatsoever to strengthen the economy but, together with massive increases in military and other spending, resulted in the greatest economic collapse in America since the great depression? Well, they are scheduled to expire at the end of this year and the president can’t wait.

He hopes that by allowing the cuts to expire the government will collect about $968 billion in extra revenue over the next ten years from taxpayers earning more than $250,000 per year. Their income tax rate will jump back to the neighborhood 39.6 % of earned income. They’re already paying 35 % now, and the rate they’ll pay on dividend income would leap to 39.6 % from the 15% they pay now.

Long term capital gains for these folks will be taxed at the new rate of 20%, up from the current 15%, and the estate tax when they die balloons to 45% of what they accumulated during life, from the current 35% death tax now.

All of this means that, just with federal taxation alone, these folks will have to fork over about 40% of any income they receive during their lives, and then if they somehow manage to save anything for their kids, the government will confiscate nearly half of it when they die. If you are successful in this country, your government regards you as a golden goose.

Even God Almighty Himself, during biblical times, was more than satisfied and happy to take 10% in sacrifices from His flock of sheep. The United States Government, by contrast, demands more than four times that figure and it is never satisfied. It just keeps taking and spending; spending and taking.

The hike in investment income taxes, for example, is not quite enough to satisfy the government monster. It plans to implement a surcharge of 3.8 % to fund the federal health care overhaul, which will bring the top dividend tax rate to 43.4 %, and the top capital gains rate to 23.8 %.

Investors in the economy would be taxed on their profits as ordinary income, instead of at the current 15% rate, if the president has his way -- a tax increase amounting to more than 100%. And every household enjoying income of more than $1 million annually will be caught up in the “Buffett Rule,” which ensures that at least 30 % of it is taxed.

On top of all that, the value of all itemized deductions for households making more than $250,000, including items such as mortgage interest and charitable contributions, would be cut to a 28 % rate with the hope of raising another $584 billion in tax revenue over the next 10 years. So the cost of owning a home and giving to charity goes way up under Obama’s new budget plan.

Airline tickets will cost more too with stiff new fees to pay for “airline security.” I guess this means that the TSA won’t be going away anytime soon. Financial institutions will be charged some $61 billion-over the next decade in "financial crisis responsibility” fees, which will no doubt be passed right on down to the consumer – you and me – making the cost of doing business higher than ever.

The president considers things like the winding down of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as “savings,” and claims that his proposed budget will result in $4 trillion in “deficit savings,” yet the deficit is still expected to rise by at least $6.6 trillion over the next 10 years. It’s quite clear, then, that any “savings” generated by this budget will be far outweighed by new spending.

Don’t count on the Republicans to put a halt to the spending spree, unless by some miracle the libertarian, Ron Paul, is elected president. Republicans spend just as much or more as Democrats and want less taxes to boot which results in even greater deficits and debt.

Case in point: The Obama administration wants to cut funding for the “D.C. Opportunity Scholarship” program, a $60 million political pet project of House Speaker, John Boehner (R-Ohio), which helps underprivileged children in Washington D.C. get vouchers for private schools. This has politicians on both sides of the aisle screaming bloody murder. The president can’t even cut $60 million worth of pork without causing hysteria on Capitol Hill.  

Meanwhile, the powers that be at NASA, are crying “irrational,” over proposed cuts for exploration of other planets, especially Mars. Two years ago, President Obama said his ultimate goal was to send astronauts to Mars. Faced, however, with a choice between spending massive amounts on a new space telescope, or massive amounts on expeditions to Mars; Mars lost. Mars missions will continue, of course, but not at the rate of spending earlier anticipated.

The cuts to the Mars missions are part of a proposed reduction of about $300 million in NASA's $1.5 billion annual planetary science budget. The current Mars budget is $581.7 million. "To me, it's totally irrational and unjustified," carped Edward Weiler, NASA's former administrator for science. "We are the only country on this planet that has the demonstrated ability to land on another planet, namely Mars. It is a national prestige issue."

You see, as far as United States government agency administrators are concerned, it’s perfectly right and proper to spend $billions of taxpayer dollars on boondoggles such as national prestige issues. Why not? The money isn’t coming out of his pocket.

Instead, NASA is planning to spend a lot more taxpayer dollars on a replacement for the aging Hubble Space Telescope, and save Mars missions for later. The new James Webb Space Telescope, originally estimated to cost $3.5 billion, is now projected to cost around $8 billion, a budget busting cost overrun of more than 100%.

Where is the savings?

There are never any savings in politician land; only taxing and spending.

Remember the great Solyndra fiasco and scandal? The United States government guaranteed a loan for the staggering sum of $535 million – over a half $billion taxpayer dollars -- to a company which was going bankrupt, and the money simply disappeared into the sinkhole.

Now we know where at least a small portion of it went. Solyndra executives were awarded quarterly bonuses worth up to $60,000 apiece as the California solar-panel Company was headed for bankruptcy. The payments were described by one former employee as "retention" bonuses to slow the high rate of turnover at the company. The rats were deserting the sinking ship and taking the bonuses with them.

This is the audacity of government taxing and spending.

Chicken Nugget School Lunch Nannies

Here’s a typical conversation between a parent and four-year-old child while the kid is getting ready for morning pre-school kindergarten:

“What would you like Mommy to pack for your lunch today, sweetheart?”

“I want a turkey sandwich with cheese, a banana, potato chips, and some apple juice, Mommy.”

“OK, honey.”

“Thanks, Mommy.”

 Sounds yummy to me; I like all that stuff for any meal; nutritious too, right?

Wrong, say the chicken nugget school lunch nannies at West Hoke Elementary School in Hoke County North Carolina.

A state Gestapo agent assigned to the pre-kindergarten school cafeteria for the sole purpose of inspecting every child’s lunch box thought that this kid’s homemade lunch didn’t have enough nutritional value, i.e. “did not meet U.S. Department of Agriculture Division of Child Development and Early Education guidelines.”

The state sanctioned nanny confiscated the poor little kid’s lunch, forced her to eat chicken nuggets instead, and then sent her home with her offending uneaten packed lunch, a note chastising Mommy for not properly feeding her daughter, and a bill in the sum of $1.25 for the three nuggets she eventually ate.

The note explained that students who didn’t bring “healthy lunches” would be offered the missing portions and that parents would be charged for the cost of the cafeteria food. “When home-packed lunches do not include all of the required items, child care providers must supplement them with the missing ones,” say the nannies.

Naturally, the child’s mother was offended by school officials telling the kid that her mother wasn’t “packing her lunch box properly.” This is what the little kids are learning in school nowadays -- that the state knows better about how to take care of them than their own parents. The state employs the child as an agent to “correct” the parent.

This incident might seem as no big deal to some people, but to me it’s another incredible outrage connected with compulsory education in America which should not be tolerated. Free people should not be forced to endure this kind of tyranny at the hands of the criminal dictatorial state. That nanny and those school officials are criminals in my opinion and should face an appropriate penalty.

First of all, what the hell are paid states agents doing at a pre-school kindergarten cafeteria inspecting little kid’s lunch boxes in the same fashion the TSA inspects passenger’s belongings at airports? What makes them think they have the right to search children’s belongings as though they were inmates in a state prison?

Come to think of it, that’s exactly what they are as far as the state is concerned – little prisoners who are forced to line up every day, recite the pledge of allegiance to the state and otherwise conform like everyone else or be singled out for punishment. What’s next; going through their pockets and book bags searching for contraband? It’s simply inconceivable; it’s over the top. 

Secondly, what in the name of reason is wrong with a turkey and cheese sandwich, a banana, a bag of chips and a carton of apple juice for a 4 year-old girl? That’s exactly what she wanted and it’s just as complete and nutritious as any other lunch I can think of. How dare these statist bastards come between a parent and child to dictate what the kid can and can’t have to eat for a homemade lunch at school?

And, sure enough, in this instance, after the media uproar over the outrage, the school officials backed down and admitted that this packed lunch was perfectly appropriate for that little girl. There was no reason on Earth to put this family through that ridiculous ordeal.

Let’s suppose this mother fed her child a big breakfast that morning and she didn’t want any lunch? Would that give these public school Nazis the right to force feed her with chicken nuggets and send her home to her Mommy with a disparaging note and a bill? Lots of people don’t eat lunch and you can count me as one of them. Two meals a day is enough for me.

Finally, as far as I can tell from this story there was no apparent evidence that this little girl was malnourished, emaciated, starving, or deprived of sustenance in any way. It’s not like she showed up at school suffering with rickets, pellagra or some other horrible nutritional disease. She’s a healthy, happy, well nourished 4-year-old kid. So how is it that these nannies feel they have the right to meddle into her family’s domestic affairs?  

That’s the problem with compulsory public school education in America. Parents are forced to send their children to school, and kids are forced to attend for 13 or more of their most formative years. If that isn’t bad enough, the state then takes the liberty of teaching their captive audience exactly what it wants them to think instead of how to think, with the object of turning each and every one of them into obedient slaves of the collective, incapable of thinking for themselves, and totally allegiant to the state.

And nowadays it starts early in pre-school kindergarten with chicken nugget school lunch nannies.

Does the First Amendment Apply Only to Christians?

Last week I opined that the Catholic Church is quite correct with their complaint that president Obama’s contraception insurance healthcare mandate as applied to religious oriented institutions violates their right to religious expression under the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment.

I stand by that opinion now even after the president’s most recent compromise offer which does absolutely nothing to cure the violation. This is because, under the proposed compromise, religious institutions will still be at least indirectly responsible for furnishing contraceptive products and services insurance coverage to employees contrary to their deeply held religious convictions.

That being said, I still have to laugh and shake my head at the ignorance of the Church, and its selfish understanding of what the First Amendment means. They simply don’t have a clue. It’s as though the First Amendment applies to them and no one else.

Now they’re taking the position that they won’t be satisfied until the mandate is lifted from any person of faith who objects to facilitating contraception coverage for employees. They’re in no mood to compromise.

You see, it’s all about their faith, their religion, and to hell with everyone else. They just don’t understand how the First Amendment was conceived to protect the freedom of expression and conscience of everyone, not just people of faith. So it’s perfectly alright for Obamacare to force the insurance mandate on everyone else as far as they are concerned just as long as they don’t have to furnish coverage for contraception.

If Obamacare mandated that government provide money to the Catholic Church, or otherwise promoted religion in direct violation of the First Amendment Establishment Clause, that would be just hunky dory. If president Obama mandated Catholic prayers to be led by teachers to students in public school classrooms, that’s perfectly fine with them. They wouldn’t see any constitutional violation at all.

The bishops characterize the Obama mandate as government coercion of religious people to do something to which they have a moral or religious objection, and that is quite true, but when the shoe is on the other foot they could hardly care less. Both the government and the church have been guilty of plenty of coercion upon humanity in their time, but any complaints about that from the secular side usually falls upon deaf ears.

Right-wing social conservative politicians and religious zealots love to describe their First Amendment constitutional complaints in military terms, e.g. the government insurance mandate is “an attack; an unprecedented attack on religious liberty.” President Obama is waging a “war; a War on Religion.”

It conjures up images in my mind of President Obama and his minions of executive branch thugs brandishing machine guns and tanks in a pitched battle with poor little huddled and oppressed Christian victims holed up in their churches.

Nonsense! It’s just government being government. Not a day passes without the United States government doing something unconstitutional somewhere.

The Church is going to file suit in federal court over this egregious constitutional violation.  If the court vindicates their rights it will be seen as a victory against government religious oppression, i.e. against the state interfering with religion. That is as it should be.

But when atheists, for example, win a court case upholding their First Amendment Establishment Clause constitutional rights requiring separation between church and state and government neutrality in matters of religion, they see it as the work of activist judges who ought to be yanked from the bench.

Religious zealots in America want a government God.  They don’t want separation between church and state until the state starts messing with them in ways they don’t appreciate.

As far as the Church is concerned: The United States Constitution and the First Amendment apply only to Christians.   

Bulls-eye Building: Bin Laden’s Multi-Billion Dollar Manhattan Monument

The last thing in the world which should be built at the site of the 9/11 Twin Towers World Trade Center disaster in lower Manhattan is another lavish World Trade Center Tower complex. But that’s exactly what it’s going to be – a huge skyscraper together with an elaborate memorial and museum for the sake of historical posterity.

Now the entire 16 acre site is a permanent reminder and monument to the dark triumph of Osama Bin Laden, the Al-Qaeda terrorist mastermind who successfully brought it down, and a big red bulls-eye target for the next terrorist attacker to aim at.  

Aside from a suitable plaque memorializing the victims, and perhaps a small park with a few trees and a fountain, a better idea for the rest of the site, in my humble opinion, would have been a parking garage connected to a shopping mall or some other kind of innocuous facility – anything to divert attention and memory from the horror of 9/11.

But no; the irrational emotionally driven American powers that be felt compelled to dub the site “ground zero,” right from the beginning, and construct the most impracticably expensive building in the history of the world there.

From now on, hapless New Yorkers are going to have every wannabe Al Qaeda terrorist America hater and his mother flocking to the “ground zero” site in droves to pay tribute to their hero, Osama Bin Laden, at the place of his victory over the American imperialist crusader enemy. That is, until one of them finds a way to bring the new skyscraper down.

When first proposed, the building was expected to cost about $2 billion. Resting firmly in government hands, however, the price tag for One World Trade Center, the lavishly conceived replacement for the original Twin Towers, has ballooned to more than $3.8 billion to date, making it by far the most expensive office building in world history.

The developer of the Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest tower, located in Dubai, UAE, by comparison cost in the neighborhood of $1.5 billion. The difference is mostly because of the politically charged nature of the World Trade Center project and the elaborate precautions which are deemed necessary to protect the building from future terrorist attackers.

Lengthy construction delays alone together with a myriad of political challenges and squabbles have resulted in eleven years of a still unfinished project. The site has been boarded up for more than 10 years.

Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, owners of the project, are displaying typical government malfeasance, mismanagement, and incompetence in the whole affair. Cost increases in the billions have resulted in higher bridge and tunnel tolls and reduced spending on other vitally necessary transportation and infrastructure projects in New York City.

Construction is far more complicated and expensive than with a traditional office tower, mostly because of security costs on a site that has been the target of two separate terrorist attacks in the past. The Twin Towers were bombed by terrorists in 1993 and then destroyed completely on 9/11/01.

Consequently, the new 1,776-foot skyscraper sits atop a heavily reinforced, windowless podium, and a thick core of steel and concrete surrounds its elevator shafts. The government run Authority has given up on any hope that the new World Trade Center will be profitable for a very long time.

For now, it’s just a big bulls-eye building – a multi-billion dollar Manhattan monument to Osama Bin Laden.  

Who’s Responsible for Contraception and Birth Control?

The Obama administration, as part of its Obamacare law, is enforcing a mandate that every health insurance plan, including those provided by religious institutions, such as parochial schools and charities, must cover contraception and other birth control products and services. Churches are specifically exempted from this mandate, but their affiliated hospitals, universities, charities and the like are not.  

Thus, Obamacare not only forces employers to provide health insurance to their employees, but dictates the substance of the coverage which must be included, even if such coverage, e.g. for contraception and birth control, is patently contrary and offensive to a provider’s deeply held religious convictions and philosophical beliefs.

This has ruffled the feathers of all the cardinals, bishops and priests in the Catholic Church, who complain loudly and bitterly that it violates the Church’s constitutional First Amendment rights to religious expression under the Free Exercise Clause.

Its proof of the Obama administration’s “War on Religion,” they insist. They don’t approve of, much less want to pay for, birth control, as it is against the teachings the Church has professed for many centuries.   

On the opposite side of the coin, the ACLU and others argue that this is not about religious freedom so much as reliance upon religion to discriminate against and deny millions of women access to birth control.

According to them if the churches get their way on this issue, a woman teaching at a Catholic university, or a nurse working at an evangelical Christian hospital could not get coverage and would consequently be denied access to basic health care.

Don’t count me as an apologist for religion in any form; I think it’s been the worst plague upon civilization since before and after the Black Death, but in this instance I’m compelled by the letter and spirit of the United States Constitution to agree that the Catholic Church is at least partially correct.  

Clearly, president Obama is not by any means waging a War on Religion; heaven forbid, but forcing Catholic institutions to provide insurance coverage to their employees, including contraception and birth control products and services, violates their freedom of religious expression under the First Amendment.

Employees of Catholic institutions or evangelical Christian hospital’s will not be denied access to basic health care if their employers aren’t required to include contraception and birth control coverage. They would just have to find it elsewhere. That’s been the American way for the last 235 years.

Religious institutions should have their way in this matter, but if that is so, it only follows naturally that the rest of us should get our way as well. If Obamacare is unconstitutional for religious institutions it’s just as unconstitutional for non-religious individuals and institutions. Why should churches and their religious institutions get an exemption from the mandate but not other groups?

The Obamacare mandates fly in the face of my deeply held philosophical beliefs and convictions too. I don’t want to be forced to pay for Sally’s breast augmentation surgery and Harry’s Viagra pills.

Why aren’t the cardinals, bishops, priests and the ACLU standing up for my constitutional rights?

More Laws for the Mentally Challenged

Politicians take a lot of blame for the stupid laws they pass, but most of the fault lies with the mentally challenged masses they represent who constantly demand more and more “action” from them. Yes, it’s the constituents out there who are the real problem. The politicians are just performing a perceived obligation to satisfy the needs of their flocks.

When I use the term mentally challenged I’m talking about those otherwise intelligent morons among us who either can’t or won’t take charge of their own lives by thinking for themselves but desperately want the collective to do their thinking for them as well as for everyone else. You know; the ones who really mean it when they say: “there ought to be a law…”

This is why the federal register of new congressional legislation grows by tens of thousands of pages every year. It’s why the volumes of statute books in every state have multiplied to fill law libraries to overflowing, and why this avalanche of mandates together with local laws, ordinances, rules and regulations have come to stifle human liberty and the pursuit of happiness everywhere in America today.

Here are just a few of the many thousands of examples:

The Texas legislature passed a law last year requiring doctors who provide abortions to show and describe in detail an ultrasound image, and play sounds of the heartbeat of the fetus, to pregnant women seeking an abortion.

Women may not decline to undergo this legally mandated protocol unless they qualify for an exception under the statute. Such exceptions suspiciously include situations in which the woman was raped, the fetus is a product of incest, or has congenital abnormalities.    

Thus, this law was plainly promulgated for the sole purpose of allowing the state of Texas to insult and intrude upon the personal liberty of innocent women by harassing and attempting to dissuade them from exercising their constitutionally protected reproductive rights.

Governor Rick Perry, the unabashed anti-abortion zealot who signed this outrage into law, praised it as “a victory [which] ensures that every Texas woman seeking an abortion has all the facts about the life she is carrying."

A federal district judge declared the law unconstitutional but was overruled by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. "The required disclosures of a sonogram, the fetal heartbeat, and their medical descriptions are the epitome of truthful, non-misleading information," Chief Judge Edith Jones wrote for the three-judge panel.

I guess this means that a state legislature can dictate the substance of what every doctor must advise a patient in any medical situation as long as the information is truthful and non-misleading. If, for example, a state wants to mandate that doctors, during every doctor visit, tell all their patients they should eat spinach for their own good, that’s just fine as far as the federal judiciary is concerned.

Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa signed into law recently an ordinance requiring porn actors to use condoms to prevent STD’s. It also forces film production companies to pay a fee for a film permit in order to finance inspections.

According to Nina Hartley, a registered nurse and long-time professional porn actress, most porn films feature sexual intercourse that lasts 30-60 minutes, and wearing a condom for that long would lead to chafing, open sores and a greater risk of transmitting diseases. “It’s a disaster for health and safety. I know it looks different from the outside, but it will not work to protect anybody,” she explained.

But what does the L.A. Authority care about health and safety? All they care about is issuing permits and collecting fees charged to create jobs for inspectors and to regulate film companies the privilege of shooting films on their turf.

A Kansas state legislator has introduced a bill to give the dog breed that played Toto in "The Wizard of Oz" special status by making it a state symbol. The proposed law designates the Cairn terrier the official dog of the state of Kansas right up there along-side the official state tree and grass.

The lawmaker says the issue was important to constituents and the terrier is an "appropriate choice." Apparently legislators in Kansas have nothing better to do with their time and taxpayer money.  

A Lake County, Fla., judge didn’t even bother to wait for the passage of a law allowing her to impose her arbitrary will upon hapless prisoners under her Authority!

George McCovery, a 345-pound man jailed for driving with a suspended license was freed nine days early thanks to the judge’s self imposed nanny style "lose-a-pound, gain-a-day" deal. "She gave me a chance to prove myself, and I didn't want to let her down," he told the Orlando Sentinel after shedding 25 pounds in 20 days.

Judge Donna Miller, whose courtroom proceedings are replayed in the TV show "Lake Courts," is famous for her unusual sentence deals. In her 17 years as a judge, she has ordered defendants to start jogging, take a dance class, tutor math and write Christmas cards. "I do what I do to try to change the person in front of me," she explained.

She decides on her own, without the benefit of law, what her prisoners need, and doesn’t hesitate to discriminate when it comes to her deals. "If the person needs jail, they get jail," she said. It’s no longer any surprise to me that judges don’t give a damn about administering the law.  

Last year, the statist city fathers of San Francisco, CA, passed the Healthy Food Incentives Ordinance, prohibiting chain restaurants, i.e. McDonald’s; from giving away Happy Meal toys with high-fat, high-sugar food orders that do not meet San Francisco’s nutrition standards.

Yes, the city of San Francisco actually has nutrition standards mandated by law.

This particular ordinance appears to be far more about politics than nutrition though. “We should not be nannies, but we should not be ninnies either,” opined Dr David Katz, director of the Yale Prevention Center, who supports the law.

“McDonald’s puts toys in those meals because well-paid executives have advised them that doing so would drive demand and sales. Parents need to exercise responsibility, but the defaults in our culture should not conspire against the weight and health of kids. No reason to make the job tougher than it already is.” The toys and the trinkets “clearly goad children to prefer and request less nutritional meals,” Katz huffed.

Who would’ve thought?

But Dr. Keith Ayoob, associate professor of pediatrics at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, disagrees. “It’s misguided to think that this is going to combat childhood obesity,” Ayoob, who grew up in San Francisco, says. “We should be focusing on school lunches, where there are a lot more calories and fat than Happy Meals, and what kids are eating at home.”

“These politicians want to be seen as childhood advocates, and they were probably feeling the pressure to do something,” he added. “But [if] they really want to be seen as that, they should be doing something like mandating physical education for all grades in the school system.”

You see, they all want their politicians to mandate something here or ban something there; many things; it’s just a question of what now to these mentally challenged anti-liberty morons.

Has all of this nonsense hurt McDonald’s?

Nope. Instead of giving away the Happy Meal toys for free, they’re now charging an extra 10 cents for the trinkets, and are therefore in total compliance (and circumvention) of the law – for now at least – but probably not for long.

There will always be more and more laws for the benefit of the mentally challenged.

Donald Trump: Kingmaker?

Early last week Donald Trump drew big-time attention to himself once again when he broke the “urgent” news that he was going to make a major announcement very soon. Buy Wednesday night press speculation reached a fever pitch about it and several news organizations reported confirmation that “The Donald” was going to endorse the candidacy of Newt Gingrich in the Republican Party presidential primary race.

All of it was typical Donald Trump bombastic blustering bullshit though. There is no doubt in my mind that he deliberately leaked a fib to the news media for the sole purpose of engendering even more attention to himself together with shock and surprise the next morning when he revealed that his endorsement would actually go to Mitt Romney.

Only a few short weeks ago, “The Donald” was shocked, surprised and miffed over Romney’s snub, when he turned down an invitation to participate in a Trump moderated debate in Iowa. He mocked Romney’s business credentials then, but boasted that: "He [Romney] talked to me about it and I probably could have gotten him to do it if I wanted to," as if he really didn’t want to.

A few days later, Trump was forced to cancel that event when it became clear that only two candidates, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, had agreed to show up. Trump was so incensed after that pathetic debacle that he publicly renounced his membership in the Republican Party and became a registered Independent. Today, Donald Trump is not even a Republican.

So why endorse Mitt Romney now; why endorse any Republican for that matter; and especially why not Newt Gingrich, his purported bosom buddy? Remember, Trump was singing the highest praises for his pal Gingrich just weeks ago. “Newt is a great guy,” and “a member of my club,” he gushed.

Mitt Romney had just soundly trounced Gingrich in the Florida primary the day before Trump’s urgent revelation to the press about a forthcoming major announcement. Romney was also far ahead in the Nevada polls. Now the handwriting was on the wall. Romney would most likely be the Republican nominee. Clearly, Trump, who prides himself as being a winner, had waited on that result until he knew he had a sure thing before going all in on Mitt Romney and making his endorsement known.

But when the actual endorsement event occurred on Thursday at a scheduled and hyped-up press conference in Trump’s lavish Las Vegas hotel and casino, it was an empty anti-climactic flop. By now, everyone – the press, the public, even Mitt Romney -- knows that Donald Trump is not sincere. They know that none of it was done for the benefit of Mitt Romney; all of it was done for Donald Trump.  

So there wasn’t much excitement and little applause at the Trump casino as Romney with his wife standing next to him shook hands tepidly with “The Donald” and acknowledged the nod. "There are some things that you just can't imagine in your life," Romney managed to say. "This is one of them."

Trump said earlier that he was “impressed” by Romney’s debate performances of late, and now believes that he can easily beat President Obama. "Mitt is tough. He's smart. He's sharp. He's not going to allow bad things to continue to happen to this country that we all love,… go out and get 'em." Trump cheered from his perch.

It all looked rather suspiciously like the final episode of one of his “Apprentice” TV reality shows. Donald Trump – kingmaker. Mitt Romney – Apprentice.

And that was it. The entire production was over in less than six minutes; Romney took no questions from reporters, then quickly left the building by a back door, as if he was embarrassed by it all, leaving Trump on his own to tell reporters how much he thinks his endorsement will help Romney.

Trump crowed that he has "a lot of good relationships with a lot of groups." "If you look at the tea party; if you look at the Christian coalition; if you look at a lot of different groups, I have very, very strong relationships with them," he bragged.

He pointedly ignored a cogent question about whether Romney had once expressed concerns about Trump challenging the validity of President Obama's birth certificate last year. He’s done a lot of dopey things like that over the years. Not surprisingly, he doesn’t want to talk about them.

Romney’s senior campaign advisor said of the endorsement: “You haven’t seen us turn down any endorsements yet… Hopefully [Trump] can help raise money and it ain’t like he’s camera shy.” Trump might be willing to do some grassroots campaigning among so-called “hyper-conservatives.”

Maybe so; maybe the Trump factor is great for attracting the hyper-conservatives.

But a Fox News poll last month revealed that Trump actually might do Romney more harm than good. Trump’s endorsement would make 27% of respondents less likely to support Romney, and only 10% more likely to vote for him. Most voters say it makes no difference to them at all. And the Democratic National Committee was happy to mock the Romney-Trump alliance with a video pointing out the fact that "They both like firing people.”

This is one of the problems in my way of thinking with the current Republican Party. The average American voter and working stiff often associates the GOP, especially the right wing elements of it, with insincere self-aggrandizing rich guys like Donald Trump, and his endorsement of Romney has the overall effect of confirming that impression.

“The Donald” has worn out his welcome with a lot of people, me included, in just the last year. How many times has this man teased us with the idea of a Republican presidential run, only to demonstrate that it’s bullshit again and again? The last time it was all a publicity stunt to gain attention for his TV show. He was insincere then and he’s insincere now. We all know it, especially Mitt Romney.   

Amazingly, even now, Donald Trump is still refusing to rule out the possibility of a third-party run for president. "Certainly if Mitt gets the nomination and he runs, I wouldn't be running again… If for some reason something happens, then it’s open season," he told Fox News.

Perhaps because he’s endorsed Mitt Romney, he’ll get another chance.

I hope not.