*Updated* January 18, 2017

IT is interesting to watch the horror show the after effects of the Trump win has created.  The name calling and blame shifting show real polarization in the media.  Great, absolutely great theater.  But does that reflect the views of the populace or just those pretending to represent them?

The pollsters are clearly horrified.  Their cash cows all have foot in mouth disease. 

Here is the problem.  Everyone assumes what people say and the stories you tell them make a difference. They might in a world war, but this is wallet.

The public is not benefiting from the country they live in the way they have been lead to believe they should and you cannot TELL them how well they are doing and how well THEIR country is being run. They know! Reality is the only measurement tool, nothing else, and the more you lie about it the worse you look.

You cannot cozy up to corporations that poison them, underpay them, rob the country and get away with it while their bosses get promotions and big bonuses, and let them stick any crap they want in our food, water, air and environment and sluff it off. The public knows.

Just because a section of the electorate is educated enough to know if they rock the boat they will get fired and the lease on their Lexus will be a bitch to pay, that does not mean they are worth anything. In fact they are the biggest failure of all.  Gee, pay me so I can service my debt and I will shut up and let you screw me and the country over.  I am a good boy with a piece of paper and my mommy says I'm nice.  Sung with aplomb and take a bow!

Who did get the election right? 

Professor Allan Lichtman.  Why?

For the same reason life insurance companies, at one time the largest and most profitable industry in the world became horrifically profitable. They look at what people do, their habits over time, in great detail and from that data, which they analyze actuarially, they are able to determine with enormous accuracy what will happen in the future. Looking backwards at past HABITS OF BEHAVIOR is one of the best predictors of future activity, barring cataclysmic events (acts of god insurers like to call them, as reasons to exempt coverage).

The 13 keys are an actuarial look at patterns of PAST HABITUAL BEHAVIORS that indicate what voters will do in an election given certain conditions. These keys are a summary of what conditions are important to voters during election years starting in 1860, and how they react to past years of governance by the incumbent party.  Based on the data a duck may have beaten Hillary Clinton. Well, that's an exaggeration.  Maybe a duck named Howard.

There have been attempts to discredit Lichtman's model, suggesting that the keys were wrong in the 2016 election because they missed Hillary Clinton's popular vote lead.  However that assumption is based on the idea that voters are too stupid to recognize the impact of the electoral college in their state.  The fact is "Every state that elected a Republican candidate for Senate voted for Trump, and every state that elected a Democratic Senate candidate voted for Clinton."

Bottom line

You can't say people are better off when they are not, you can't call full employment a good job at a Ford plant being replaced with getting paid one-third as much clerking at Wal-Mart, you can't call wars that turn out to be one big, not even well crafted lie a mission from God, and you can't call immigration a good thing when everything else is not working and there are fears more people will water down the market for available work.  And you can't call good governance what has been happening in the US.

Instead of lying, politicians have to deliver what they promise, or the public will figure out how to get rid of them, deservedly so.  Do you think calling a person without an education names is going to make them shut up, or bragging about a Harvard Degree means anything?

Thomas Edison did not go to college; Steve Jobs did not go to college, and they did more for the world than the Goldman Sachs bankers did that nearly bankrupt it.  The world is totally screwed up and the geniuses now running things are in serious trouble.  

Want to fix things, then fix them, lying and bullshit won’t work and they cannot change the course of history.

Trump

Will Trump pull off the mystery upset of all time and do a great job?  I have no idea and it does not matter.  At least the whole world now is talking, arguing, discussing, hardening positions, softening positions and looking in the mirror.  That’s pretty good already.  Can he do anything else?  That folks, remains to be seen.  But I rather like a volatile loudmouth with a thin skin getting attacked.  His reflexive anger exposes a lot of things to scrutiny. And if he does blow us up, so what.  Any of you geniuses figured out how to live forever?  What an interesting time to be alive.