The craziness of the GameStop buying frenzy is rocking Wall Street. I find this sticking to the big hedge funds amusing.  I am also happy that this is making some small investors rich.  But I am concern that some unsophisticated beginning investors are going to get hurt badly.  Reddit is pushing investors to go into silver now.  I think this means that stocks like GameStop are going to drop soon.  Small investors who had buy in recently will have bought high and will end up selling low and lose money.  While hedge funds may lose billions, most of them can survive the losses.  A small investors who loses a few thousands may be in much more trouble.

I think most of the hedge funds have gotten out of the positions by now.  So there won't be much more loss for the MAN.  More buying of these stocks that are way overvalued will make this a pyramid scheme now.  Those who bought early and are encouraging others to jump in now are like those at the top of the pyramid.  They will benefit but those who jump in now will be at the bottom and lose.  So my advice for anyone who is not in, don't get in.  Those who have bought in, take your profit and run now!  

I am not sure if Robinhood is being bought off by hedge fund companies or other rich people on Wall Street to limit the buying of GameStop.  But it is really doing the small guy a favor at this time.  Don't buy unless you have money to burn to make a political statement.

 The Democrats sent the article impeachment to the senate yesterday.  I think it is a waste of time as there is no way that 17 GOP senators are going to vote to convict.  Then  Trump is going to claim victory again even though this time a majority will vote against him.  The only thing that maybe accomplished is that it forces the GOP senators to vote for and against Trump.  By siding with Trump, those senators in not safe seats will lose votes.  After all, if causing insurrection is not a crime, then what is?

To show that Trump's influence is still important in the GOP, look at Oregon and Arizona, two states that voted for Biden.  The GOP in Arizona voted to censure Cindy McCain, Jeff Flake and its own GOP governor due to their not supporting Trump's effort to overthrow the election.  Given that Arizona just voted for Biden and elected two Democratic senators, it would seem the GOP is committing suicide in a state they have a chance to win back in the near future.  In Oregon, they voted to censure the Congressmen who voted to impeach Trump.  Given that Oregon is a blue state, it would seem that the GOP is trying to become totally irrelevant in Oregon.  But we now know who controls the GOP in that state.

I think that people like Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley should resign or kick out of the senate.  Their support of Trump, their lies about the election and incitement of the rioters make them as guilty as Trump.  Of course, nothing will happen to them in the senate but hopefully it will cause them in the ballot box in the future.  By the way, in October 2019 two senators went to Hong Kong to egg on the demonstrators.  One was Ted Cruz.  I did not know the other guy at the time as he was new.  That guy called for independence of Hong Kong.  That senator?  It was Josh Hawley.  Hard to imagine anyone would be accused of causing insurrection against both China and the U.S. in less than a year and a quarter!

 Had no power in the house for 41 hours, starting 5 am on Tuesday to 10 pm on Wednesday.  So missed all of the inauguration.  Seems that nothing bad happened, so that was good.  If we had violence then our democracy maybe questioned.  Now the world see that we still have peaceful transfer of power.  We can still be the leader of democracy in the world.  If anyone has comment or insight on the inauguration, please write in, as I saw nothing live.

Now comes the hard part for Biden and Harris:  how to govern such a divided country.  There is one advantage for Biden.  Like when Obama started in 2009, things can't really get much worse.  The financial situation was bound to go up for Obama and the Covid-19 situation is bound to get better for Biden.  But in both cases, almost half of the country is against them and rooting for them to fail.  McConnel said that he wanted to make Obama a one term president from day one.  He has not said that about Biden but he is sure strategizing it.

Biden started right away to reverse some of the executive orders by Trump.  While I agree most of these changes, it is a problem if every 4 years we change the goals of the country.  If we keep changing courses every four years, lots of money and energy will be wasted and we are still back to square one.  What Biden and whoever follows him will need to convince the public is what our long term goals will be.  For that to happen we need bipartisanship.  I am all for getting rid of the extreme right wing politics of Trump.  But I don't want the extreme left to dominate the next four years either.  We should try to work on things that we obviously agree with.  Like improving our infrastructure.  I think we can all agree that we should not have power outage for 41 hours when there is no hurricane, tornado or earthquake!

 As I watched the events of the past week unfold, there are just too many things for me to rant about.  So I am going to write a few things down and talk about them quickly.  If any of these things you want to discuss further or something else you want to rant about, feel free to do so.

1.  The first thing to come to mind as I watched the insurrection was that it was predictable.  If a bunch of men carrying automatic weapons can storm into the capitol of Michigan to protest restrictions due to COVID, you can be sure that a march into D.C. on voting conspiracy is bound to turn dangerous.  If there is a plot against the governor of Michigan, what are the chances that lawmakers in D.C. not be threatened?

2.  The lack of preparation of this protest was shocking.  As noted above, it is predictable what may happen.  During the Black Lives Matter march, there were tremendous police presence with riot gears.  They were deployed all over, including the steps of the Lincoln Memorial where no lawmakers were in danger.  The BLM protests were peaceful and yet 300 arrests were made.  So far only 80 or so are arrested this time even though many of the perpetrators were seen on camera.

3.  Not only were preparations poor, some cops were seen letting protesters go where they want by removing barriers for them.  At least one cop took a selfie with them.  You have to wonder how much our law enforcement has been infiltrated by white supremacy groups.  I am sure that if these people were black or wore a turban instead of MAGA hats, the response from law enforcement would be quite different.

4.  In interviews, some of the Trump supporters said that they were there because they had no choice as local government and the courts are against them.  This is laughable.  In Georgia, for example, the governor and secretary of state are both Republicans.  The SCOTUS has 6 of 9 conservative justices, 3 of which were appointed by Trump.  The idea that these people got cheated is absurd.  

5.  The Trump supporters still think Trump is their savior.  Don't they realize he just want to use them.  He has no loyalty to them.  He told them to march to the capitol and he will march with them.  Where was he?  He abandoned them and after it was over, condemned them for the violence.  He abandoned all those around him, including Pence, Sessions, Barr etc.

6.  Yet his supporters still think all those abandoning Trump are traitors.  They threatened to hang Pence.  They harassed Graham at the airport.  

7.  There is no doubt that Trump incited the violence.  But what about people like Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley and Rudy Giuliani?  They also got blood in their hands.  

I will stop for now but may rant more later.  One last thing, I don't think impeachment will do much good.  As with last time, it will just make Trump a victim.  Although more people, including Republicans, want to kick him out now, there are no two third majority willing to do so in the Senate.  We have too many things to do right now to invest time on this.  With the Biden administration needing to hit the ground running, we need to get his cabinet confirmed as soon as possible.  So we cannot waste time having a trial in the Senate now.

 I am pleasantly surprised that the Democrats appear to win both senate races in Georgia last night.  Both results will be contested by the GOP in the coming days with one of them going to recount for sure.  But the fact that the Democrats are likely to win both is shocking to me.

Perdue almost got the majority in November which would have meant no runoff.  Warnock was in first place in the other contest but if you add all the GOP votes vs all the Democrat votes in November, the GOP would be ahead.  Given that Democrats usually turnout less in non presidential elections and the fact that Trump is not there to pull down the GOP tickets, it would seem like the GOP would retain control of the Senate.

Things didn't look good when the exit polls showed that people over 65 turnout more than in the general election while the youngest group turnout less.  Also, due to the fact that the votes that were cast before yesterday tend to be more democrats, it was expected that the Democrats would have early leads with the GOP doing better as the night went on.  So when the GOP candidates took the lead, it looked really bad.  But some of the Democrat stronghold reported late and the tide turned as Wednesday approached.  It was a miniature version of the general election.  Another rollercoaster ride that was not good for my health.

Once again the Democrats owe the black community.  They delivered again with record turnouts and record margins for the Democrats.  Stacey Abrams will be revered for years to come in the Democratic party.  Will this lead to more power for blacks in the party?

Trump was the big loser yesterday.  Frankly, he has been the big loser period.  Those who rode his coattail must be regretting it today.  The question is, don't the Republicans see that Trump was a novelty act that is no longer appealing to the country?  He has no morality and no competence.  Why do people like Ted Cruz kiss his butt?  Cruz buys Trump's conspiracy theory.   One of Trump's conspiracy theory was that Cruz's father was involved in killing JFK.  I think this tells us more about Cruz and others like him than about Trump.

Well, more craziness is expected as the crazy people in the GOP are going to challenge the electoral college result today.  What will Pence do?  And what would Trump say about Pence afterward when it is clear that Pence can't overturn the election.  To all those who support Trump, it will be clear again that he will dump you if you don't do everything he asks you, even if it is to commit treason.