Saturday night musings

The cast of Hamilton the musical sending a message to Vice-president elect Pence.  In response, Donald Trump tweeted the following:   "The Theater must always be a safe and special place.The cast of Hamilton was very rude last night to a very good man, Mike Pence. Apologize!"

Mr. Soon to be President unless a miracle occurs, they have nothing to apologize for.  Americans have the right to speak out about their elected leadership.  The elected leadership needs to grow a thicker skin.

BTW, the calls to #BoycottHamilton are just dumb.  The show is completely sold out from now through next August.

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But another boycott effort seems to be picking up steam.  When the tape was released of Donald Trump's now infamous "grab them by the pussy" comments, women began to boycott the Ivanka Trump line of shoes and other merchandise. Now Shoes.com has removed her line of footwear from their website.

Shannon Coulter, the first to call for the boycott after that tape was released also reports that Bellacor, a retailer of furniture and interior products has pulled all Trump-signature products from their shelves.

Nordstrom is the target of boycott attempts but they aren't giving in.  I'm conflicted about that because a good friend's product line is on the shelves at Nordstroms and I don't want to see her business suffering because of a boycott.  But I recognize the right of anyone and everyone to vote with their wallets.

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Going back to Trump tweets, here is another, "The ONLY bad thing about winning the Presidency is that I did not have the time to go through a long but winning trial on Trump U. Too bad!"

Bull.  You were almost certainly going to lose and lose big.  Then there's the small matter of the $1 million in penalties being paid to the state of New York.  New York's Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said, "I am pleased that under the terms of this settlement, every victim will receive restitution and that Donald Trump will pay up to $1 million in penalties to the State of New York for violating state education laws."

You don't pay penalties when you were in the right.  The truth is that Mr. Trump simply could not fight this lawsuit and become the first President-elect in history to be spending time in a courtroom defending himself against a fraud charge before and after his inauguration.  Nor could he risk losing such a lawsuit.

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Is anyone surprised that the "autographed" hats and other items sold with Donald Trump's autograph on his website at exorbitant prices were actually signed with an auto-pen?  I'm not.

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A Gold Star family was flying to claim the body of their fallen son at Dover AFB when their flight from Stockton to Phoenix landed well behind schedule.  The flight attendant, knowing that this family needed to make their connecting flight, asked passengers to remain seated so that a "special military family" could deplane first.  Some of the first-class passengers booed in response to the request.

Now I don't know for sure if the flight attendant's announcement mentioned that this family was a Gold Star family or that they were making a connecting flight to meet the body of their fallen son, but whatever happened, the booing was wrong.  I'd wager heavily that the people who booed never served, and have no children serving.

I've mentioned this before, but I still can't wrap my head around the fact that we deplane but we don't deboat or deship or deauto.  If we deplane for a stopover, when we go back aboard are we replaning?

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Republican member of Congress Darrell Issa is in a close election and is claiming that "Liberals are trying to steal the election" in a fundraising appeal.

Clearly this is a plan to raise funds to pay for a recount, should one be needed.  Nothing wrong with that, until the fact that this is a man whose net worth is in excess of $200 million.

He's a military veteran who knew two years ago about the problem with California Army National Guard personnel being forced to repay bonuses and didn't lift a finger until it made the news.

Casting aspersions and accusations that one side of the political aisle is using illegal aliens to hijack an election in an era of Republican-led efforts at voter suppression is worse than the pot calling the kettle black.

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Everyone who ever wondered about those Health Savings Accounts that employers push along with plans featuring very high deductible amounts should read this piece by Michael Hiltzik.