Couple-a things: first, Senator Warren, author of several books on finance for teens and average people, is not stupid, despite sometimes appearing so. It's worse than that: she's dishonest. She knows quite well that inflation, as Milton Friedman said, is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon. Simply put, inflation always comes from money-printing not backed by equivalent increases in production. It's ALWAYS a government thing.

Second, Joe Manchin is the senator from my home state, West-by-God-Virginia. I've met him a couple of times, and he, too, is not stupid; far from it. His family tradition as Democrats goes way back, to include an uncle, A. James Manchin, who was a flamboyant politician in the old school of back-slapping and baby-kissing. Truly a delightful man.

But Joe now has a real problem. He was elected as a Democrat in a highly Democratic, United Mine Workers of America state. They say every kitchen in West Virginia has two pictures on the wall: Jesus and John L. Lewis. Unfortunately, as the Democrat party lurched to the left, West Virginia became heavily Republican, leaving Joe - elected as a Democrat - hanging high and dry. Change parties? He'd might as well try to change his sex. But he now has to walk that line between common sense and the radical left. Never trust him completely; just hope he can hang in there and stop the lunatics bent on destroying this Nation.