Opinion Line (Dec. 28)

Hopefully insurance – that is, other people’s money – does not pay for vehicles that are stolen after they are left running and unlocked.

Seems like it’s always someone – either Russian hackers or a bus boy at a fundraiser – influencing our presidential elections.

It’s true that Vladimir Putin influenced the election. He promised me a pair of tickets to the annual borscht festival, a big furry Cossack hat, and a bottle of Absolut vodka if I’d vote for Donald Trump. That guy is persuasive.

The Electoral College should be abandoned. If every person’s vote counted the same, maybe I wouldn’t hear so many people say that they didn’t vote because their vote “doesn’t count anyway.”

President Obama and the Justice Department failed to speak out and investigate death threats against members of the Electoral College but go crazy when a minority person is shot by police – another reason Democrats won’t win elections anytime soon.

Trump shrugs off the e-mail hacking, belittles our intelligence community, and fails to grasp the importance of attending daily intelligence briefings. Wake up to the new threat to our country that Trump represents.

The whining you hear is actually the fearful cries of apprehension from those who realize what it can mean to us, and the future of our good country, when someone who hardly qualifies as a decent citizen becomes our leader.

Remember when sportswriters wrote about sports, and actors acted, and ball players played ball, and singers sang, and none of them used their fame as a political soapbox? Those were good days.

A salaried employee should be required to work however many hours it takes. They get a salary to cover down time and overtime. If they want to work hourly, then so be it.

I hope the fad of grown men wearing wild-and-crazy socks with their suits ends with the beginning of the new year.

This story was originally published December 28, 2016 at 5:02 AM with the headline "Opinion Line (Dec. 28)."