Last night, on my way home from work here in California, I tried - and I mean tried hard - to listen to your radio show for more than a couple of minutes, but you made my stomach churn in disgust.
You're a smart guy - I've read two of your books ('Men in Black' and 'Liberty & Tyranny') and found your writing engaging and smart without being condescending.
What I do not get is that you, as a self-declared Conservative and Constitutionalist, are backing a flagrant liar who has zero true love for the Constitution. Lip service doesn't count and actions speak louder than words in this world.
Ted Cruz lied when he said he would go to Washington and work to repeal Obamacare - all the alleged Republicans we voted into office in 2012 said the same thing and where are we now? Obamacare is still in place. The Republicans even had the majority in the House and the Senate for the last two years - so what's the problem? Why is Obamacare still in full force and effect?
I don't get how anyone can call healthcare a "right" within the Constitutional context. Where in the Founding documents was Congress given the power to force American citizens to buy a service or commodity they don't want? Yet he and the others elected in 2012 did nothing to even take a snippet out of that law that was shoved down our collective throats by Congress and SCOTUS.
Ted Cruz lies when he says he wants a sovereign United States with secure borders. He didn't pick up that banner until he saw that it was winning support among millions of American voters. Then he started giving it half-hearted lip service and I do not believe for one nanosecond that he means it.
Ted Cruz is married to a woman who worked for more than five years for the Council on Foreign Relations - the group that wants, as stated on their own website - "globalization".
Now please do not try to play ignorant on this one. Globalization means one-world order - a Tolkien-esque world (One Ring to Rule Them All). The UN wants the same thing - as stated in flowery terms in their 2030 Agenda.
Couples do not share bathrooms, beds, pillows and raising children without exchanging ideas and interests. We know where Heidi Cruz stands on this one-world order idea - she is straight on-board with it. Her name is all over a report for the CFR that calls for a unification of North America into a single entity - similar to the EU. And look at how well that's working out.
So are you telling me, Mr. Levin, that you agree with the globalist agenda? That you want our Constitution to take a back seat (all the way in the back) to some doctrine handed down by the UN and its globalist masters? Is that what you really want?
Because sure as I'm sitting here writing this, that is where you and others like you who support and promote Ted Cruz will drive us if Cruz is elected President.
Aside from that, he is a one-term Senator. What happened with the last one-term Senator who was elected President? Do we really want a replay of the past eight years?
Or is it because you can rest assured in his malleability in the hands of the money makers and power brokers that own his soul? After all, no candidate who has received as many tens of millions of dollars in contributions from Super PACs can walk away without obligation - we all know that.
Whatever it is, all respect I had for you before last night and hearing your constant refrain of "Wonderful Ted" is gone. I cannot fathom how anyone intelligent can get behind someone as bought and paid for as he is, who can swallow his lies whole and still praise him to the skies.
Best~
Philippa
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories
Wednesday, April 27, 2016
Tuesday, April 26, 2016
I am LIVID
Okay - a week ago I wrote about my MIL's broken ankle. She caught her foot inside the leg of her night table as she was getting out of bed.
She's eight-seven years old, seems to have every medical condition known to science, and has never taken care of herself. More than twenty years ago she was diagnosed with high blood pressure, congestive heart failure, diabetes and half-a-dozen other things. She takes enough prescription medications to stock a decent pharmacy. I know about that because I do her medications for the week every Sunday - three pill boxes with meds for each condition along with supplements to help keep her healthy.
After she hurt her ankle, she didn't complain about it so we didn't realize how bad the situation was for a couple of days. We thought, based on what she told us, that it was simply twisted or sprained. We did what anyone else would do in a situation like that. We applied heat and ice to try to cope with what little swelling there was, and gave her Tylenol for the pain. Still she didn't say anything that led us to believe that it was worse than a sprain, but when it didn't get better after a couple of days we agreed it was time to take her into the hospital to get her checked out.
Instead of trying to get her into the car, which might have twisted it again, we called the paramedics. They came and transported her.
X-rays showed a broken ankle. The surgeon, after he opened her leg to repair it, told us he had a hard time distinguishing bone from soft tissue because her osteoporosis is so advanced. In the end, he used five screws to put it back together.
Now - two weeks after her hospitalization and surgery, ten days after she came home, two social workers showed up on our front doorstep this afternoon. They accused my husband of abusing his mother.
This after two weeks of listening to her moan and cry all hours of the day and night - "help me, I have to get out of here" - when she can't stand or put any weight at all on her ankle.
This after she's tried, several times, to get out of bed in the middle of the night. After the second time, hubby resorted to using a two-inch wide canvas strap, stretched between the metal bed rails we bought to keep her from falling out of bed. When it's tied in place, a good five inches above her belly and not in contact with her at all when she's lying down, it's enough to make her believe she can't get up. She's not aware enough or nimble enough to crawl out from under it - which anyone with a sliver of awareness would figure out in a nanosecond.
She is so lost to everything that, the other night, with no blankets or anything on and the ceiling fan directly above her bed running on full but with that strap in place several inches above her, she swore it was making her hot.
For the past ten days she has repeatedly demanded that she be allowed to go home. When we tell her "you are home" she doesn't let up - she doesn't understand. Other times she'll cry that she wants to go to bed. When we tell her she's in bed, at home, she'll say "oh" and start right in again.
Hubby has been getting up three and four times a night, every night, turning her to prevent bed sores, transferring her to the commode we have sitting smack dab in the middle of our living room, changing her, bathing her, feeding her. He has done everything possible for her and the nurses that have been coming to visit every-other-day for the past week haven't complained or commented.
Then, today, these two officious idiots show up on our front door step and accuse us of abusing her.
Yes - I am livid because this is not right, this is not even close to being right. It's so unjust, so wrong that hubby lost his temper and now, because hubby is over-tired, stressed and less than his normal self, they have threatened to come back with law enforcement.
If we were abusive of her, why would we take her to the hospital where our abuse would be found out? Why wouldn't we just strap her ankle - about which she was not even complaining - and tell her "shut up"? If we really wanted to beat her, starve her, hurt or harm her why would we take her to someplace where she will get care?
All this does is make me less inclined to look outside our house for help for her, not more.
Yes, I am livid.
My MIL is not unaware of her surroundings and she is easily frightened just by having the nurses coming into the house. After each of their visits it takes hours for her to settle down and even begin to relax and act at least a little calm and as rational as her current baseline.
I am so fed up with this nanny state looking over my back fence, telling me what I am doing wrong or at least not doing right, that I want to scream.
What are they going to do next? Now, along with all of the other stress we're dealing with - sleeplessness and strain of doing our best to be patient and caring, to do for her everything she needs to have done, we have this giant sword of Damocles hanging over us.
Are they going to haul our butts to jail for doing our level best within our income level and ability to pay?
Will they drag us into court and force us to defend ourselves?
Perhaps they'll forcibly ship her off to some "home" where other families send their elderly cast-offs to die.
That would be abuse of the worst kind. She's agoraphobic. She never settled into the hospital - didn't sleep for nearly ten days except when she was under anesthesia. She has some sense of where she is, so they're going to disrupt that and say it's best for her?
We've already been down that road once, and after that "home" did their dead level best to kill her by overdosing her on insulin (nine hours after being admitting she was back at the ER that had released her to their "care" with diabetic shock), we pulled her out. The State of California agreed with us and we had legal standing to file a lawsuit against that "home" but chose not to because of the strain it would put on MIL.
I don't know - I have no idea what's going to come next but having gotten this off my chest, for the moment, I feel a little better. But take this as a warning: if you live in the United States of America and if you take care of any family member at all - child or parent - you had damned well better wrap them up in bubble wrap and make sure they don't show a single solitary bruise or you might be up on charges next.
Philippa
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories
She's eight-seven years old, seems to have every medical condition known to science, and has never taken care of herself. More than twenty years ago she was diagnosed with high blood pressure, congestive heart failure, diabetes and half-a-dozen other things. She takes enough prescription medications to stock a decent pharmacy. I know about that because I do her medications for the week every Sunday - three pill boxes with meds for each condition along with supplements to help keep her healthy.
After she hurt her ankle, she didn't complain about it so we didn't realize how bad the situation was for a couple of days. We thought, based on what she told us, that it was simply twisted or sprained. We did what anyone else would do in a situation like that. We applied heat and ice to try to cope with what little swelling there was, and gave her Tylenol for the pain. Still she didn't say anything that led us to believe that it was worse than a sprain, but when it didn't get better after a couple of days we agreed it was time to take her into the hospital to get her checked out.
Instead of trying to get her into the car, which might have twisted it again, we called the paramedics. They came and transported her.
X-rays showed a broken ankle. The surgeon, after he opened her leg to repair it, told us he had a hard time distinguishing bone from soft tissue because her osteoporosis is so advanced. In the end, he used five screws to put it back together.
Now - two weeks after her hospitalization and surgery, ten days after she came home, two social workers showed up on our front doorstep this afternoon. They accused my husband of abusing his mother.
This after two weeks of listening to her moan and cry all hours of the day and night - "help me, I have to get out of here" - when she can't stand or put any weight at all on her ankle.
This after she's tried, several times, to get out of bed in the middle of the night. After the second time, hubby resorted to using a two-inch wide canvas strap, stretched between the metal bed rails we bought to keep her from falling out of bed. When it's tied in place, a good five inches above her belly and not in contact with her at all when she's lying down, it's enough to make her believe she can't get up. She's not aware enough or nimble enough to crawl out from under it - which anyone with a sliver of awareness would figure out in a nanosecond.
She is so lost to everything that, the other night, with no blankets or anything on and the ceiling fan directly above her bed running on full but with that strap in place several inches above her, she swore it was making her hot.
For the past ten days she has repeatedly demanded that she be allowed to go home. When we tell her "you are home" she doesn't let up - she doesn't understand. Other times she'll cry that she wants to go to bed. When we tell her she's in bed, at home, she'll say "oh" and start right in again.
Hubby has been getting up three and four times a night, every night, turning her to prevent bed sores, transferring her to the commode we have sitting smack dab in the middle of our living room, changing her, bathing her, feeding her. He has done everything possible for her and the nurses that have been coming to visit every-other-day for the past week haven't complained or commented.
Then, today, these two officious idiots show up on our front door step and accuse us of abusing her.
Yes - I am livid because this is not right, this is not even close to being right. It's so unjust, so wrong that hubby lost his temper and now, because hubby is over-tired, stressed and less than his normal self, they have threatened to come back with law enforcement.
If we were abusive of her, why would we take her to the hospital where our abuse would be found out? Why wouldn't we just strap her ankle - about which she was not even complaining - and tell her "shut up"? If we really wanted to beat her, starve her, hurt or harm her why would we take her to someplace where she will get care?
All this does is make me less inclined to look outside our house for help for her, not more.
Yes, I am livid.
My MIL is not unaware of her surroundings and she is easily frightened just by having the nurses coming into the house. After each of their visits it takes hours for her to settle down and even begin to relax and act at least a little calm and as rational as her current baseline.
I am so fed up with this nanny state looking over my back fence, telling me what I am doing wrong or at least not doing right, that I want to scream.
What are they going to do next? Now, along with all of the other stress we're dealing with - sleeplessness and strain of doing our best to be patient and caring, to do for her everything she needs to have done, we have this giant sword of Damocles hanging over us.
Are they going to haul our butts to jail for doing our level best within our income level and ability to pay?
Will they drag us into court and force us to defend ourselves?
Perhaps they'll forcibly ship her off to some "home" where other families send their elderly cast-offs to die.
That would be abuse of the worst kind. She's agoraphobic. She never settled into the hospital - didn't sleep for nearly ten days except when she was under anesthesia. She has some sense of where she is, so they're going to disrupt that and say it's best for her?
We've already been down that road once, and after that "home" did their dead level best to kill her by overdosing her on insulin (nine hours after being admitting she was back at the ER that had released her to their "care" with diabetic shock), we pulled her out. The State of California agreed with us and we had legal standing to file a lawsuit against that "home" but chose not to because of the strain it would put on MIL.
I don't know - I have no idea what's going to come next but having gotten this off my chest, for the moment, I feel a little better. But take this as a warning: if you live in the United States of America and if you take care of any family member at all - child or parent - you had damned well better wrap them up in bubble wrap and make sure they don't show a single solitary bruise or you might be up on charges next.
Philippa
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories
Monday, April 25, 2016
Bailing Like Mad
Oh! How I wish I had a single shred of artistic talent for drawing. If I did, I have the vision of a perfect political jab.
After hearing the news this morning, I can clearly visualize the Cruz ship with Ted directing John to move the deck chairs over there while flailing madly with the bailing bucket and staring down the looming Trump iceberg.
There is nothing more pathetic than desperation, and that's what the latest bid by Cruz and Kasich clearly shows.
When Cruz took Carson aside into the closet before one of the debates a while back, he was probably trying to build the same kind of coalition.
Carson, man that he is, had none of it. He was dignified and gentlemanly and, so far as I've heard, has kept that conversation entirely to himself. That was a couple of months ago and word hasn't leaked, so he's a good and honorable man. Unlike the individual who attempted to importune him in that closet.
Now Cruz is probably dangling the Vice Presidency in front of Kasich's nose. That, of course, demands that Kasich is as completely delusional and naive as he appears.
Come on, man! You have won one state out of thirty-eight that have voted so far, and that by a narrow margin, and you really think you're going to pull this off and become Pres? Yeah, there's a sign of intelligence and savvy.
Even at the convention he's not going to stand a chance. According to current rules he cannot even have his name entered for consideration on the first ballot because he hasn't won the requisite number of state contests. To think this guy, as clueless as this seems, might be president is even scarier than the prospect of Hilliary or Bernie.
On the other hand, maybe his colluding with the Slime Master shows he has woken up to reality, sees he has no possible path to the nomination and is hitching his wagon to the one guy who will have him.
Of course, I wouldn't put it past Cruz to make all sorts of early morning promises ("of course I respect you") and then kick Kasich to the curb once the nomination is his.
However, when I went to school, 0 + 0 = 0 and that's what I'm seeing. Although, in this case, I think the equation could be re-written as Loser + Loser = Loser.
I am delighted that Trump is again leading in all of the polls leading into tomorrow's primaries. Even Indiana which just last week most of the pundits were saying would be a Cruz state. Now Trump is up by about six points, so I have hope. According to the specific state polls, Trump is trouncing the competition - and I don't think the desperate grasping at straws by Cruz is going to help him. It makes him look weak and sleazy.
Well, whatever else happens in the next forty-eight hours, I hope it's good news.
Best~
Philippa
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories
After hearing the news this morning, I can clearly visualize the Cruz ship with Ted directing John to move the deck chairs over there while flailing madly with the bailing bucket and staring down the looming Trump iceberg.
There is nothing more pathetic than desperation, and that's what the latest bid by Cruz and Kasich clearly shows.
When Cruz took Carson aside into the closet before one of the debates a while back, he was probably trying to build the same kind of coalition.
Carson, man that he is, had none of it. He was dignified and gentlemanly and, so far as I've heard, has kept that conversation entirely to himself. That was a couple of months ago and word hasn't leaked, so he's a good and honorable man. Unlike the individual who attempted to importune him in that closet.
Now Cruz is probably dangling the Vice Presidency in front of Kasich's nose. That, of course, demands that Kasich is as completely delusional and naive as he appears.
Come on, man! You have won one state out of thirty-eight that have voted so far, and that by a narrow margin, and you really think you're going to pull this off and become Pres? Yeah, there's a sign of intelligence and savvy.
Even at the convention he's not going to stand a chance. According to current rules he cannot even have his name entered for consideration on the first ballot because he hasn't won the requisite number of state contests. To think this guy, as clueless as this seems, might be president is even scarier than the prospect of Hilliary or Bernie.
On the other hand, maybe his colluding with the Slime Master shows he has woken up to reality, sees he has no possible path to the nomination and is hitching his wagon to the one guy who will have him.
Of course, I wouldn't put it past Cruz to make all sorts of early morning promises ("of course I respect you") and then kick Kasich to the curb once the nomination is his.
However, when I went to school, 0 + 0 = 0 and that's what I'm seeing. Although, in this case, I think the equation could be re-written as Loser + Loser = Loser.
I am delighted that Trump is again leading in all of the polls leading into tomorrow's primaries. Even Indiana which just last week most of the pundits were saying would be a Cruz state. Now Trump is up by about six points, so I have hope. According to the specific state polls, Trump is trouncing the competition - and I don't think the desperate grasping at straws by Cruz is going to help him. It makes him look weak and sleazy.
Well, whatever else happens in the next forty-eight hours, I hope it's good news.
Best~
Philippa
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories
Monday, April 18, 2016
Broken Ankle, Life & Stuff - but Juan is wrong
It's not my ankle, thank goodness, but my MIL's - and I do have sympathy for her, but being a human being and at least somewhat selfish, I am glad it isn't mine. That, Visual Basic, hockey and baseball have been the distractions the past several days. I'm back, though, and happy to be so.
Despite the distractions, I did not miss much on the political front. It's too fascinating not to watch, and sitting around a hospital room for several hours each of the past few days has been a good opportunity.
I caught the series of attempts at explanation of election theft and corruption from the GOP / RNC all weekend. "It's da rules!" And, this morning on CNN, there was a question by a talking head that made me snort in derision and get very annoyed with the respondent. There's also the Juan Williams nonsense that just about dislocated my jaw when it dropped.
Regarding the GOP / RNC - the party is still shrugging its collective shoulders and saying, "So? We're corrupt. We know it and now you know it, so what are you going to do about it? Now give us your money, we need it so we can fund this system we've got going."
I'm surprised, given the frequency of those shrugs, that they don't have bigger pains in their collective neck than they do.
What's striking is that this is the only time in my life I can think of when open bribery is perfectly okay. You can't bribe a cop, you'll go to jail. You can't bribe a judge, you'll go to prison. But you can bribe a politician - or at least a political operative. That's perfectly okay. It's all out in the open and no one, except the electorate who are having their voices stripped from the process, seems to care.
What I haven't yet heard, aside from "but they're the rules", is why the GOP / RNC holds that it's perfectly okay to buy votes. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge - here's a bag full of expensive goodies - you'll vote for me now, right? They haven't even given a glance toward what's honorable and that just serves to make my disgust with them that much deeper.
My snort of derision and deep feeling of annoyance came from the fact that one of Trump's representatives missed a golden opportunity. Now, to be fair, I don't actually know whether he is 'official' or not, but he was asked a question I would have leapt all over. It had to do with the buying of delegates:
"Why doesn't Trump play by the same (corrupt / dishonorable / semi-criminal) set of rules Cruz is playing by?"
What he didn't say but should have is: "Because Mr. Trump has ethics and character. He hasn't gotten where he is by cheating and bribery, and he's not going to start now. If Mr. Cruz chooses to buy votes and politicians, that's his prerogative, but it's underhanded and dishonors our democratic election process."
It is very annoying that that was not the answer given. Instead it was pure blather that really offered nothing substantive. Frankly, a fresh dog dropping would have more substance than the half-answer given. In fact, that half answer was so unmemorable I don't remember it. I just remember annoyance that this talker didn't have the brains to forcefully and unequivocally state that if Ted Cruz chooses to be a sleaze, let him, but we are not going to lower ourselves into that cesspit.
This has been all over the place this weekend, ever since Trump started pointing out how corrupt and undemocratic this election system is. Reince Priebus (for whom I actually feel a little tiny bit sorry since he's the one holding the crap-filled bag) has been out there shrugging madly. "These are the rules." As if rules aren't there to be broken and as if rules that are bad cannot be changed.
What Priebus totally ignored, and what I'm sure he doesn't want us to see because this might be a wave of the party future, is this (excerpted from the Denver Post article of August 25, 2015, bold typeface added for emphasis):
Colorado will not vote for a Republican candidate for president at its 2016 caucus after party leaders approved a little-noticed shift that may diminish the state's clout in the most open nomination contest in the modern era.
The GOP executive committee has voted to cancel the traditional presidential preference poll after the national party changed its rules to require a state's delegates to support the candidate who wins the caucus vote.
State Republican Party Chairman Steve House said the party's 24-member executive committee made the unanimous decision Friday — six members were absent — to skip the preference poll.
http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_28700919/colorado-republicans-cancel-2016-presidential-caucus-vote
So there it is: 18 people in the state of Colorado decided the primary election for all of the nearly 1,000,000 registered Republican voters. Yeah - there's democracy in action for you - not rigged, not unethical or dishonorable.
Whatever. What's come clear to me is that the GOP / RNC doesn't want people to actually participate in the election process - it's too bothersome. They just want our money - thus the fundraising letters and so on.
Well, they're not getting mine. Whether you choose to pony up for a corrupt process is up to you, but I value the representation of my labor too much to throw it into a pit toilet.
Regarding Juan Williams - he's an idiot. I knew he was long ago, but now he's proved it. He's got a new book out and yesterday he was asked, "If the Founders came back today, what would they think?"
He responded, "They'd be thrilled!"
Uh... No. They'd be doubled over heaving up their guts at what's gone on.
Central Banking - There's an excellent article on the "Constitutionality" of the Central Bank (aka Federal Reserve), here:
http://www.harvard-jlpp.com/33-2/465.pdf
Bottom line, though, is that while Alexander Hamilton supported the idea of a central bank, many of the Founders did not.
Enumerated Powers - There were three distinct types of power given to the Federal Government. Not three hundred or three thousand, just three. And the Founders were explicit in how the division was to fall: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." So if it was not given to the United States by the Constitution it was a State's Right, or a People's Right.
Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist 32 (of the Federalist Papers):
Government has shoved down our collective throats Obamacare.
Government has instituted a tax system not called out in the Constitution.
Government has created a fourth and separate branch of government in the form of the Central Bank / Federal Reserve that is not subject to the will of the People. This is a "bank" not subject to government control, audit, disclosure or intervention - it stands apart from and superior to the Legislative and Judicial branches.
Government funds abortion - and doesn't bat an eye over the fact that the organization on the front line of that effort harvests baby parts.
We have a socialist running for president who wants to take my wealth (non-existent though it is) and pass it off to someone else in pure Marxist fashion - from each according to their ability to each according to their need. It's still not defined who has ability, aside from being able to get your butt out the door and hold a job, versus who has need.
Since I have a house that's falling apart, and car that's twelve years old and can just barely make ends meet, I'd say I have need, but the fact that I have an income is red meat to those who don't.
So no. I do not believe for one instant that the Founders coming back today would be thrilled. Horrified, yes. Disgusted, yes. Dismayed, yes. Not thrilled. And then there's all that's going on in this so-called electoral process where the People's voice doesn't count for squat.
Now - we're all caught up. I hope you had a wonderful weekend and a better week coming up.
Best~
Philippa
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories
Despite the distractions, I did not miss much on the political front. It's too fascinating not to watch, and sitting around a hospital room for several hours each of the past few days has been a good opportunity.
I caught the series of attempts at explanation of election theft and corruption from the GOP / RNC all weekend. "It's da rules!" And, this morning on CNN, there was a question by a talking head that made me snort in derision and get very annoyed with the respondent. There's also the Juan Williams nonsense that just about dislocated my jaw when it dropped.
Regarding the GOP / RNC - the party is still shrugging its collective shoulders and saying, "So? We're corrupt. We know it and now you know it, so what are you going to do about it? Now give us your money, we need it so we can fund this system we've got going."
I'm surprised, given the frequency of those shrugs, that they don't have bigger pains in their collective neck than they do.
What's striking is that this is the only time in my life I can think of when open bribery is perfectly okay. You can't bribe a cop, you'll go to jail. You can't bribe a judge, you'll go to prison. But you can bribe a politician - or at least a political operative. That's perfectly okay. It's all out in the open and no one, except the electorate who are having their voices stripped from the process, seems to care.
What I haven't yet heard, aside from "but they're the rules", is why the GOP / RNC holds that it's perfectly okay to buy votes. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge - here's a bag full of expensive goodies - you'll vote for me now, right? They haven't even given a glance toward what's honorable and that just serves to make my disgust with them that much deeper.
My snort of derision and deep feeling of annoyance came from the fact that one of Trump's representatives missed a golden opportunity. Now, to be fair, I don't actually know whether he is 'official' or not, but he was asked a question I would have leapt all over. It had to do with the buying of delegates:
"Why doesn't Trump play by the same (corrupt / dishonorable / semi-criminal) set of rules Cruz is playing by?"
What he didn't say but should have is: "Because Mr. Trump has ethics and character. He hasn't gotten where he is by cheating and bribery, and he's not going to start now. If Mr. Cruz chooses to buy votes and politicians, that's his prerogative, but it's underhanded and dishonors our democratic election process."
It is very annoying that that was not the answer given. Instead it was pure blather that really offered nothing substantive. Frankly, a fresh dog dropping would have more substance than the half-answer given. In fact, that half answer was so unmemorable I don't remember it. I just remember annoyance that this talker didn't have the brains to forcefully and unequivocally state that if Ted Cruz chooses to be a sleaze, let him, but we are not going to lower ourselves into that cesspit.
This has been all over the place this weekend, ever since Trump started pointing out how corrupt and undemocratic this election system is. Reince Priebus (for whom I actually feel a little tiny bit sorry since he's the one holding the crap-filled bag) has been out there shrugging madly. "These are the rules." As if rules aren't there to be broken and as if rules that are bad cannot be changed.
What Priebus totally ignored, and what I'm sure he doesn't want us to see because this might be a wave of the party future, is this (excerpted from the Denver Post article of August 25, 2015, bold typeface added for emphasis):
Colorado will not vote for a Republican candidate for president at its 2016 caucus after party leaders approved a little-noticed shift that may diminish the state's clout in the most open nomination contest in the modern era.
The GOP executive committee has voted to cancel the traditional presidential preference poll after the national party changed its rules to require a state's delegates to support the candidate who wins the caucus vote.
State Republican Party Chairman Steve House said the party's 24-member executive committee made the unanimous decision Friday — six members were absent — to skip the preference poll.
http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_28700919/colorado-republicans-cancel-2016-presidential-caucus-vote
So there it is: 18 people in the state of Colorado decided the primary election for all of the nearly 1,000,000 registered Republican voters. Yeah - there's democracy in action for you - not rigged, not unethical or dishonorable.
Whatever. What's come clear to me is that the GOP / RNC doesn't want people to actually participate in the election process - it's too bothersome. They just want our money - thus the fundraising letters and so on.
Well, they're not getting mine. Whether you choose to pony up for a corrupt process is up to you, but I value the representation of my labor too much to throw it into a pit toilet.
Regarding Juan Williams - he's an idiot. I knew he was long ago, but now he's proved it. He's got a new book out and yesterday he was asked, "If the Founders came back today, what would they think?"
He responded, "They'd be thrilled!"
Uh... No. They'd be doubled over heaving up their guts at what's gone on.
Central Banking - There's an excellent article on the "Constitutionality" of the Central Bank (aka Federal Reserve), here:
http://www.harvard-jlpp.com/33-2/465.pdf
Bottom line, though, is that while Alexander Hamilton supported the idea of a central bank, many of the Founders did not.
Enumerated Powers - There were three distinct types of power given to the Federal Government. Not three hundred or three thousand, just three. And the Founders were explicit in how the division was to fall: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." So if it was not given to the United States by the Constitution it was a State's Right, or a People's Right.
Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist 32 (of the Federalist Papers):
This exclusive delegation, or rather this alienation, of State sovereignty, would only exist in three cases: [i] where the Constitution in express terms granted an exclusive authority to the Union; [ii] where it granted in one instance an authority to the Union, and in another prohibited the States from exercising the like authority; and [iii] where it granted an authority to the Union, to which a similar authority in the States would be absolutely and totally contradictory and repugnant.So, no. I don't believe that if the Founders came back today they would be at all thrilled with how things are.
Government has shoved down our collective throats Obamacare.
Government has instituted a tax system not called out in the Constitution.
Government has created a fourth and separate branch of government in the form of the Central Bank / Federal Reserve that is not subject to the will of the People. This is a "bank" not subject to government control, audit, disclosure or intervention - it stands apart from and superior to the Legislative and Judicial branches.
Government funds abortion - and doesn't bat an eye over the fact that the organization on the front line of that effort harvests baby parts.
We have a socialist running for president who wants to take my wealth (non-existent though it is) and pass it off to someone else in pure Marxist fashion - from each according to their ability to each according to their need. It's still not defined who has ability, aside from being able to get your butt out the door and hold a job, versus who has need.
Since I have a house that's falling apart, and car that's twelve years old and can just barely make ends meet, I'd say I have need, but the fact that I have an income is red meat to those who don't.
So no. I do not believe for one instant that the Founders coming back today would be thrilled. Horrified, yes. Disgusted, yes. Dismayed, yes. Not thrilled. And then there's all that's going on in this so-called electoral process where the People's voice doesn't count for squat.
Now - we're all caught up. I hope you had a wonderful weekend and a better week coming up.
Best~
Philippa
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories
Thursday, April 14, 2016
Reince - Be Honest for a Change, Wouldja?
Okay - I'm confounded, I'll admit it. After all, I'm 'just' a voter. Sitting here, in my kitchen as I write this, it looks like Reince Priebus and his puppet masters are just making things up as they go. This day it's this, the next day it's that - all in an effort to suppress the will of the American voter.
I'm registered with the party of my choice, have been for years. Now I'm holding my nose until June 8th, fighting the waves of nausea brought on by that party's dishonesty and malfeasance. I'm hoping that the nausea won't rise to levels that will overwhelm me - June seems a long way off.
When June 7th comes I'll go out and vote. Which means standing in line and taking time out of my day and life just as tens of millions of others have done this year. Even though I have other things to do, things I need to do and want to do, I'll take however long it takes to go vote, because I think it's important.
On June 8th I will go down to my local post office, and I will pick up a new voter registration card, and I will leave the party of which I have been a (formerly) proud member for nearly forty years. I will re-register as an Independent. I will not sully my soul by staying in the pig sty of Republican politics for one instant longer than it takes for me to vote for Donald Trump in this primary.
But given recent events - what happened in Colorado, the buying and selling of delegate votes in Louisiana and Arkansas and other states - I'm not sure it is important any more.
Across America, millions of people have put their lives on hold for hours at a time - some for five or six hours or longer - to go caucus or stand in line to vote. They voted. The majority to date have said they want Donald Trump to be the next president. In the Republican race, he has won more contests than any other candidate. He's got about two million more votes than Ted Cruz, but all of that might not count.
Ted Cruz is out buying - yes, folks, buying - delegates. And I do not give one little tiny rip that he says he's not, that it's all by the rules.
Call it whatever you want to call it, but buying is when you give someone something in exchange for something else. You give the supermarket your money in exchange for your groceries. That is buying.
In this case, Cruz is buying delegates by promising them things or giving them things. He is shopping through the election aisles for delegates - all sitting on their shelves and waiting for him to make an offer - $1.39 for this, $5.59 for that - and when he gets to the checkout (Convention), he will pay for them.
Delegates should not be commodities easily bought and sold by the highest, sleaziest bidder - they should be required to represent the voices of the people who sent them to Cleveland - and not on just the first ballot. Bound delegates should remain bound for at least two ballots to give the process a chance to work as the candidates buy, sell and trade the souls of those people who are there, allegedly, to represent the voters who got them there.
And I do not give the least little rip if it's a swag bag loaded with expensive gifts (legal) or political favor (not legal). It is precisely the same thing because in the final analysis, it is an exchange: For this I will give you that.
I just wish to Heaven that Reince Priebus would find his spine long enough to shush his puppet masters and then be honest.
Go ahead, Reince, tell all of those tens of millions of people who voted for Trump in Iowa and New Hampshire and all the other states that it was just a show, that their time, their energy, their passion doesn't count for anything.
Instead of wasting our time, our passion, our energy and attention listening to the people who are in front of us as candidates, just tell us flat out so there is no misunderstanding, that there is no point in us even paying attention to this circus. Then we can turn off our television sets, ignore the political ads, and just stop paying even lip service to this. We can go back to living our lives, walking the treadmill of futility all so we can get nowhere.
We can go back to being the hopeless lab rats the RNC and GOP see us as. Sitting in our cages of economic despair, just waiting for the next tax to fall on our shoulders, the next corporation to close its doors, our hope for ourselves and our children and grandchildren to turn to desert dust as we are put out of work while employers move overseas.
Who gives a good goddamn if American citizens live or thrive?
The GOP doesn't. Their actions make it clear they don't.
The RNC doesn't - they are conniving and colluding with other people not even in this race, hiding behind closed doors, working hard to thwart the will of the Americans who have gone out to vote, who have made it clear that we, the People called out in the Bill of Rights and Constitution, want Donald Trump as president.
The Washington Elites don't. Of course they don't because a non-politician, someone who cannot be bought and sold, manipulated and controlled is going to upset their apple cart.
You know what, though? I. Don't. Care. I don't care what they don't want.
From the preamble to the Bill of Rights all through the Constitution, We the People have the power to rule our lives.
This is, as it has been from the outset, a government of, by and for The People - and if the RNC, the GOP Establishment and the Elites don't get it, they shouldn't be surprised if this bloodless revolution they are seeing in the voting booth becomes something else. They will have brought it on themselves.
So, c'mon, Reince - just take that deep breath. Tell us none of this matters, that it doesn't count for anything.
Or get the Hell out of our way. Stop trying to manipulate us and our government - follow the will of the People and tell the delegates that they are not for sale. That they have been entrusted by the voters and are obligated to us.
Now - put up or shut up, 'k?
Philippa
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories
I'm registered with the party of my choice, have been for years. Now I'm holding my nose until June 8th, fighting the waves of nausea brought on by that party's dishonesty and malfeasance. I'm hoping that the nausea won't rise to levels that will overwhelm me - June seems a long way off.
When June 7th comes I'll go out and vote. Which means standing in line and taking time out of my day and life just as tens of millions of others have done this year. Even though I have other things to do, things I need to do and want to do, I'll take however long it takes to go vote, because I think it's important.
On June 8th I will go down to my local post office, and I will pick up a new voter registration card, and I will leave the party of which I have been a (formerly) proud member for nearly forty years. I will re-register as an Independent. I will not sully my soul by staying in the pig sty of Republican politics for one instant longer than it takes for me to vote for Donald Trump in this primary.
But given recent events - what happened in Colorado, the buying and selling of delegate votes in Louisiana and Arkansas and other states - I'm not sure it is important any more.
Across America, millions of people have put their lives on hold for hours at a time - some for five or six hours or longer - to go caucus or stand in line to vote. They voted. The majority to date have said they want Donald Trump to be the next president. In the Republican race, he has won more contests than any other candidate. He's got about two million more votes than Ted Cruz, but all of that might not count.
Ted Cruz is out buying - yes, folks, buying - delegates. And I do not give one little tiny rip that he says he's not, that it's all by the rules.
Call it whatever you want to call it, but buying is when you give someone something in exchange for something else. You give the supermarket your money in exchange for your groceries. That is buying.
In this case, Cruz is buying delegates by promising them things or giving them things. He is shopping through the election aisles for delegates - all sitting on their shelves and waiting for him to make an offer - $1.39 for this, $5.59 for that - and when he gets to the checkout (Convention), he will pay for them.
Delegates should not be commodities easily bought and sold by the highest, sleaziest bidder - they should be required to represent the voices of the people who sent them to Cleveland - and not on just the first ballot. Bound delegates should remain bound for at least two ballots to give the process a chance to work as the candidates buy, sell and trade the souls of those people who are there, allegedly, to represent the voters who got them there.
And I do not give the least little rip if it's a swag bag loaded with expensive gifts (legal) or political favor (not legal). It is precisely the same thing because in the final analysis, it is an exchange: For this I will give you that.
I just wish to Heaven that Reince Priebus would find his spine long enough to shush his puppet masters and then be honest.
Go ahead, Reince, tell all of those tens of millions of people who voted for Trump in Iowa and New Hampshire and all the other states that it was just a show, that their time, their energy, their passion doesn't count for anything.
Instead of wasting our time, our passion, our energy and attention listening to the people who are in front of us as candidates, just tell us flat out so there is no misunderstanding, that there is no point in us even paying attention to this circus. Then we can turn off our television sets, ignore the political ads, and just stop paying even lip service to this. We can go back to living our lives, walking the treadmill of futility all so we can get nowhere.
We can go back to being the hopeless lab rats the RNC and GOP see us as. Sitting in our cages of economic despair, just waiting for the next tax to fall on our shoulders, the next corporation to close its doors, our hope for ourselves and our children and grandchildren to turn to desert dust as we are put out of work while employers move overseas.
Who gives a good goddamn if American citizens live or thrive?
The GOP doesn't. Their actions make it clear they don't.
The RNC doesn't - they are conniving and colluding with other people not even in this race, hiding behind closed doors, working hard to thwart the will of the Americans who have gone out to vote, who have made it clear that we, the People called out in the Bill of Rights and Constitution, want Donald Trump as president.
The Washington Elites don't. Of course they don't because a non-politician, someone who cannot be bought and sold, manipulated and controlled is going to upset their apple cart.
You know what, though? I. Don't. Care. I don't care what they don't want.
From the preamble to the Bill of Rights all through the Constitution, We the People have the power to rule our lives.
This is, as it has been from the outset, a government of, by and for The People - and if the RNC, the GOP Establishment and the Elites don't get it, they shouldn't be surprised if this bloodless revolution they are seeing in the voting booth becomes something else. They will have brought it on themselves.
So, c'mon, Reince - just take that deep breath. Tell us none of this matters, that it doesn't count for anything.
Or get the Hell out of our way. Stop trying to manipulate us and our government - follow the will of the People and tell the delegates that they are not for sale. That they have been entrusted by the voters and are obligated to us.
Now - put up or shut up, 'k?
Philippa
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories
Wednesday, April 13, 2016
Fascism is Alive & Well in the GOP
Robert Zubrin is the individual who wrote a resolution that "prevented" any of the Colorado delegates from voting for Donald Trump in the recent cluster event in Colorado Springs. Spewage like his makes me want to throw-up.
This is not American because it is the encouragement of the suppression of free speech, free thought and free association. American Thinker allowing his steaming waste to sit on its site is a matter of free speech, but it disgusts me. However, it is free speech so I will not rail against them, but it is disappointing and I don't know that I'll be going back there. If you want to find what this pile of manure contains you can - I've given you the pointers, but I will not provide the link - it's too foul to waste space on it here.
When one individual stands in front of another individual or a group, and dictates how that individual or group shall conduct themselves, that is fascism. They are taking away the free choice - the liberty - of the individual or group being confronted.
If I could think of a more condemning word, anything stronger that's fit for print, I'd use it. This man exemplifies the worst of human character by setting himself above the liberty he claims to embrace in his post.
Actions speak much louder than words and the fact that he can say what he did, write what he did, shouts what he thinks, that squelching freedom of thought or action in others is perfectly all right.
Now shame on those others, the people who went along with this individual's "resolution". Obviously they are incapable of thinking for themselves, for standing up and saying, no matter how they as an individual feel, that deciding what is right for everyone irrespective of personal view or opinion is wrong.
They are less than sheep - they are brainless, spineless and unthinking parasites, not caring that by signing onto such a resolution - particularly given the broader circumstances surrounding it - that this is not a democratic effort. This is, pure and simple, dictatorship.
These people were under zero obligation to follow this man's "resolution". Rather, the Colorado GOP had an obligation to tell him where to get off because as soon as they didn't, they joined him in creating an un-democratic construct.
If the people of Colorado think they are well-served by their Republican party and this kind of control, God help them. It is crystal clear to me that in Colorado Democracy has died and fascism has taken its place.
The fact that the Republican National Committee hasn't stood up to demand that this person stand down is telling of the rank corruption permeating the entire organization. Just more proof that the Establishment's greatest fear is that if no one showed up to vote on election day their corrupt power structure would be fully revealed in all its rotten glory.
What they don't get is that Donald Trump is not only successful, he is decent. Or perhaps that's their problem with him.
I watched the CNN Town Hall with Trump and his family last night. I was already in his corner but that man and his family impressed me.
Children are a reflection of their parents, perhaps even the best, most accurate reflection when you get down to it. They absorb what they see and experience from the time of their birth through all their formative years.
If a child is made to believe that everything is theirs, they'll be selfish.
If they think that no one else matters, they'll be uncaring.
If they think they will always win, they will never learn how to lose.
If they are never taught courtesy and respect, why should they show those attributes?
If they are taught that, because they are rich they are better than others, we end up with kids like that idiot in Texas who was let off of serious jail time because he was never taught the value of human life. He claimed 'affluenza' and got away with it.
Watching and listening to Trump's children last night I was humbled to see what a great family he has raised. Poised, respectful, thoughtful, articulate - everything any parent could wish their children to be, as a reflection of their upbringing. Those individuals told me more about Donald Trump and his character than any interview with the man, could.
If he, a decent, hard-working, intelligent man with a clear focus on what this country needs to improve not only the quality of life for its citizens, but its standing in the world isn't qualified, I don't know who is. Certainly none of the other candidates are, because none have the world vision Trump has shown.
He said we're on precarious footing - another financial bubble that will be catastrophic when it bursts. First, he was ridiculed - that was last week. This week, a number of those laughing stopped long enough to examine what he said, and they've admitted he's right.
Art Laffer is not a Trump fan, but he was on Fox Business last night and he agreed - we are in a situation where, when (not if, but when) this bubble bursts, the financial collapse of 2007 / 2008 will look like a child's tea party. A number of other prominent economists have been muttering into their armpits, 'dammit - he's right'.
They don't like it - they don't like telling average Americans things like that because it makes them nervous.
When average people get nervous they shy away from risky investments and look for more stable places to park their money. Unfortunately, that financial movement would bring out the burst faster than it would happen otherwise, so they encourage Joe and Jo Sixpack to keep their money where it is - even though those people will, when the bubble does burst, as it will, lose far more than they would if they moved it now.
But, it seems that the Establishment - because of Trump's vision and understanding of the real world and what it all means - want anyone but Trump. So they'll settle for someone they can manipulate - a Cruz or a Clinton.
It's disgusting and the fact that we have individuals shutting down free speech, free through and free association - and the Establishment in the form of the Republican National Committee and GOP are allowing this to happen - stinks to high Heaven.
Philippa
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories
This is not American because it is the encouragement of the suppression of free speech, free thought and free association. American Thinker allowing his steaming waste to sit on its site is a matter of free speech, but it disgusts me. However, it is free speech so I will not rail against them, but it is disappointing and I don't know that I'll be going back there. If you want to find what this pile of manure contains you can - I've given you the pointers, but I will not provide the link - it's too foul to waste space on it here.
When one individual stands in front of another individual or a group, and dictates how that individual or group shall conduct themselves, that is fascism. They are taking away the free choice - the liberty - of the individual or group being confronted.
If I could think of a more condemning word, anything stronger that's fit for print, I'd use it. This man exemplifies the worst of human character by setting himself above the liberty he claims to embrace in his post.
Actions speak much louder than words and the fact that he can say what he did, write what he did, shouts what he thinks, that squelching freedom of thought or action in others is perfectly all right.
Now shame on those others, the people who went along with this individual's "resolution". Obviously they are incapable of thinking for themselves, for standing up and saying, no matter how they as an individual feel, that deciding what is right for everyone irrespective of personal view or opinion is wrong.
They are less than sheep - they are brainless, spineless and unthinking parasites, not caring that by signing onto such a resolution - particularly given the broader circumstances surrounding it - that this is not a democratic effort. This is, pure and simple, dictatorship.
These people were under zero obligation to follow this man's "resolution". Rather, the Colorado GOP had an obligation to tell him where to get off because as soon as they didn't, they joined him in creating an un-democratic construct.
If the people of Colorado think they are well-served by their Republican party and this kind of control, God help them. It is crystal clear to me that in Colorado Democracy has died and fascism has taken its place.
The fact that the Republican National Committee hasn't stood up to demand that this person stand down is telling of the rank corruption permeating the entire organization. Just more proof that the Establishment's greatest fear is that if no one showed up to vote on election day their corrupt power structure would be fully revealed in all its rotten glory.
What they don't get is that Donald Trump is not only successful, he is decent. Or perhaps that's their problem with him.
I watched the CNN Town Hall with Trump and his family last night. I was already in his corner but that man and his family impressed me.
Children are a reflection of their parents, perhaps even the best, most accurate reflection when you get down to it. They absorb what they see and experience from the time of their birth through all their formative years.
If a child is made to believe that everything is theirs, they'll be selfish.
If they think that no one else matters, they'll be uncaring.
If they think they will always win, they will never learn how to lose.
If they are never taught courtesy and respect, why should they show those attributes?
If they are taught that, because they are rich they are better than others, we end up with kids like that idiot in Texas who was let off of serious jail time because he was never taught the value of human life. He claimed 'affluenza' and got away with it.
Watching and listening to Trump's children last night I was humbled to see what a great family he has raised. Poised, respectful, thoughtful, articulate - everything any parent could wish their children to be, as a reflection of their upbringing. Those individuals told me more about Donald Trump and his character than any interview with the man, could.
If he, a decent, hard-working, intelligent man with a clear focus on what this country needs to improve not only the quality of life for its citizens, but its standing in the world isn't qualified, I don't know who is. Certainly none of the other candidates are, because none have the world vision Trump has shown.
He said we're on precarious footing - another financial bubble that will be catastrophic when it bursts. First, he was ridiculed - that was last week. This week, a number of those laughing stopped long enough to examine what he said, and they've admitted he's right.
Art Laffer is not a Trump fan, but he was on Fox Business last night and he agreed - we are in a situation where, when (not if, but when) this bubble bursts, the financial collapse of 2007 / 2008 will look like a child's tea party. A number of other prominent economists have been muttering into their armpits, 'dammit - he's right'.
They don't like it - they don't like telling average Americans things like that because it makes them nervous.
When average people get nervous they shy away from risky investments and look for more stable places to park their money. Unfortunately, that financial movement would bring out the burst faster than it would happen otherwise, so they encourage Joe and Jo Sixpack to keep their money where it is - even though those people will, when the bubble does burst, as it will, lose far more than they would if they moved it now.
But, it seems that the Establishment - because of Trump's vision and understanding of the real world and what it all means - want anyone but Trump. So they'll settle for someone they can manipulate - a Cruz or a Clinton.
It's disgusting and the fact that we have individuals shutting down free speech, free through and free association - and the Establishment in the form of the Republican National Committee and GOP are allowing this to happen - stinks to high Heaven.
Philippa
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories
Tuesday, April 12, 2016
The GOP Sleaze Factor
For the past couple of days there has been a lot of discussion crossing the airwaves about the Colorado Republican non-primary, and it is not complimentary. Both the state and the national GOP have infuriated millions of the people who make up their base. And many of those infuriated voters don't even live in the State of Colorado. I live in California and I am furious over this disgusting play.
As soon as the primary season is past, just as soon as I have the chance to vote Trump in the primary here in California, I will reject the GOP and re-register as an Independent. I suspect millions of other people will do the same, and it is all because of the GOP's own malfeasance and pure-d sliminess.
I'm sure this was not something the RNC / GOP Establishment wanted to happen but they have brought it on themselves by their own tone-deaf arrogance. They have insulted every single Republican voter this election season and I will not willingly affiliate myself with a political party so disconnected from its base.
Worse, instead of listening and trying to figure out that they're pissing me and others like me off, they keep shoving their collective head farther up their alimentary canal. All in an effort to not hear what the people of this country are screaming:
We do not want Paul Ryan.
We do not want some other party hack flown in at the last minute and shoved down our throats against our will.
The majority who have spoken so far in their state primaries do not want Ted Cruz. If they did, he would be ahead in the delegate count instead of trailing by more than 200 and a lot farther back if he wasn't such a wheeler-dealer. Which is fine to a point, but buying people who's own characters are highly questionable if a swag bag is all it takes, is disgusting.
What the GOP / RNC wanted was for things behind the scenes to hum along quietly, without anyone paying attention. Kind of like:
So what is all this excitement about Colorado? In case you haven't been listening to the bombast and whining, it's because about a million people in the state of Colorado were cut out of this election. They had their voices silenced by a decision made by their party "representatives".
According to the Colorado Secretary of State records available online, as of April 1st this year, there are more than 957,000 active registered Republicans and more than 1,016,000 Independent voters registered. These are the two voting blocs most likely to vote for Donald Trump. But Colorado canceled it's Republican primary election for this presidential cycle last August.
This isn't just any election cycle. This is the election cycle during which America is choosing its next president for the next four or eight years. And what does the Colorado GOP do? Why, it completely cut its electorate out of the process by not holding a primary.
Instead, the party apparatchiks held district conventions to select representatives to attend a state delegation selection party. In the end, just 6,000 Coloradans attended that. Of those, each who wants to go to the next level had just a matter of seconds to sell themselves to the other attendees for one of thirty-seven delegate slots.
So from a potential field of nearly two million voters, six thousand people got to pick thirty-seven to represent them at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland this July. Now I'm sorry, but to me, a mere tenth of one percentile for whom I didn't even get to vote is not representational.
Worse still is that the Colorado GOP is clearly biased. They set this up specifically so a non-traditional candidate couldn't possibly win their delegates. Now Cruz, being the Washington insider that he is, and probably with a wink and a nod from Colorado party officials, learned of this set-up beforehand, and was able to make hay with it.
This is not America. This is not how our democratic republic is supposed to work. It is one person, one vote and when a political party cuts its base out of an election, that is wrong.
Last night I was watching a program on Fox Business Network and there was a segment in which someone said something profound:
'Take away my vote, the last thing that makes us equal.'
Think about that for a second. That says it all. The one place in life where Americans are perfectly equal is in the voting booth. In the voting booth there is no race, no color, no religion, no economics, no nothing. It is the most level of playing fields - and what the Colorado GOP did was to take that away.
When the dust settled, the Colorado GOP Tweeted:
This Tweet, "We did it. #NeverTrump" was quickly taken down - but they did Tweet it, and it is disgusting as a representation of democracy.
What about all of the people who didn't realize that the primary had been canceled?
Granted, this was decided last August and there were newspaper articles leading up to it, but what recourse did Joe or Josephine Sixpack-Republican voter have if they disagreed with this change?
It was a backroom deal done by the party officials and, from what I've been able to find, they didn't include the electorate in the decision. They just did it. Silencing Joe and Jo Sixpack, cutting them off and shutting them out in the cold.
What about all of the people in Colorado who wanted to speak for themselves, to choose and cast a vote for a particular candidate? Nope. Sorry - you're not allowed.
What about all of the people who wanted to participate in the process, but couldn't because of health or economic reasons? The party's party was held in Colorado Springs - what if you couldn't get from home to there because you didn't have a car, or couldn't afford the bus ticket? Sorry. Too bad, so sad.
What the Republican party did in Colorado was completely shut out the electorate. They decided who was not going to be their candidate long before their turn came up to vote. The people of Colorado who might support Donald Trump or John Kasich got royally screwed by their own political party.
Now isn't that nice?
And what's going to happen with me is I'll keep doing what I do now. When the Slime Master appears on my television screen, I change channels. #NeverCruz.
Come June 8th, I will change my party affiliation - for good.
Best~
Philippa
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories
As soon as the primary season is past, just as soon as I have the chance to vote Trump in the primary here in California, I will reject the GOP and re-register as an Independent. I suspect millions of other people will do the same, and it is all because of the GOP's own malfeasance and pure-d sliminess.
I'm sure this was not something the RNC / GOP Establishment wanted to happen but they have brought it on themselves by their own tone-deaf arrogance. They have insulted every single Republican voter this election season and I will not willingly affiliate myself with a political party so disconnected from its base.
Worse, instead of listening and trying to figure out that they're pissing me and others like me off, they keep shoving their collective head farther up their alimentary canal. All in an effort to not hear what the people of this country are screaming:
We do not want Paul Ryan.
We do not want some other party hack flown in at the last minute and shoved down our throats against our will.
The majority who have spoken so far in their state primaries do not want Ted Cruz. If they did, he would be ahead in the delegate count instead of trailing by more than 200 and a lot farther back if he wasn't such a wheeler-dealer. Which is fine to a point, but buying people who's own characters are highly questionable if a swag bag is all it takes, is disgusting.
What the GOP / RNC wanted was for things behind the scenes to hum along quietly, without anyone paying attention. Kind of like:
So what is all this excitement about Colorado? In case you haven't been listening to the bombast and whining, it's because about a million people in the state of Colorado were cut out of this election. They had their voices silenced by a decision made by their party "representatives".
According to the Colorado Secretary of State records available online, as of April 1st this year, there are more than 957,000 active registered Republicans and more than 1,016,000 Independent voters registered. These are the two voting blocs most likely to vote for Donald Trump. But Colorado canceled it's Republican primary election for this presidential cycle last August.
This isn't just any election cycle. This is the election cycle during which America is choosing its next president for the next four or eight years. And what does the Colorado GOP do? Why, it completely cut its electorate out of the process by not holding a primary.
Instead, the party apparatchiks held district conventions to select representatives to attend a state delegation selection party. In the end, just 6,000 Coloradans attended that. Of those, each who wants to go to the next level had just a matter of seconds to sell themselves to the other attendees for one of thirty-seven delegate slots.
So from a potential field of nearly two million voters, six thousand people got to pick thirty-seven to represent them at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland this July. Now I'm sorry, but to me, a mere tenth of one percentile for whom I didn't even get to vote is not representational.
Worse still is that the Colorado GOP is clearly biased. They set this up specifically so a non-traditional candidate couldn't possibly win their delegates. Now Cruz, being the Washington insider that he is, and probably with a wink and a nod from Colorado party officials, learned of this set-up beforehand, and was able to make hay with it.
This is not America. This is not how our democratic republic is supposed to work. It is one person, one vote and when a political party cuts its base out of an election, that is wrong.
Last night I was watching a program on Fox Business Network and there was a segment in which someone said something profound:
'Take away my vote, the last thing that makes us equal.'
Think about that for a second. That says it all. The one place in life where Americans are perfectly equal is in the voting booth. In the voting booth there is no race, no color, no religion, no economics, no nothing. It is the most level of playing fields - and what the Colorado GOP did was to take that away.
When the dust settled, the Colorado GOP Tweeted:
What about all of the people who didn't realize that the primary had been canceled?
Granted, this was decided last August and there were newspaper articles leading up to it, but what recourse did Joe or Josephine Sixpack-Republican voter have if they disagreed with this change?
It was a backroom deal done by the party officials and, from what I've been able to find, they didn't include the electorate in the decision. They just did it. Silencing Joe and Jo Sixpack, cutting them off and shutting them out in the cold.
What about all of the people in Colorado who wanted to speak for themselves, to choose and cast a vote for a particular candidate? Nope. Sorry - you're not allowed.
What about all of the people who wanted to participate in the process, but couldn't because of health or economic reasons? The party's party was held in Colorado Springs - what if you couldn't get from home to there because you didn't have a car, or couldn't afford the bus ticket? Sorry. Too bad, so sad.
What the Republican party did in Colorado was completely shut out the electorate. They decided who was not going to be their candidate long before their turn came up to vote. The people of Colorado who might support Donald Trump or John Kasich got royally screwed by their own political party.
Now isn't that nice?
And what's going to happen with me is I'll keep doing what I do now. When the Slime Master appears on my television screen, I change channels. #NeverCruz.
Come June 8th, I will change my party affiliation - for good.
Best~
Philippa
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories
Saturday, April 9, 2016
Oh, Good Grief! C'mon Nancy, that's just plain Sexist!
Late yesterday, after spending my morning trying to wrap my brain around a new database design, I popped over to Real Clear Politics for a rest. I hadn't had my daily fix of prose and polls and, when the page opened, I just about fell off my chair.
On their home page was a link to a Los Angeles Times piece by Nancy Cohen: 'Why Women Should Vote For Women'.
On the face of it, that title is pure sexist - just as sexist as if someone named 'Norman' Cohen had written 'Why Men Should Vote for Men'.
C'mon, now, be honest. Do you think there wouldn't be screams from the scalded female contingent if that was a headline in a prominent newspaper? I can hear 'em now.
Attempting to do my due diligence, I followed the link to the L.A. Times's website where it's posted. Uh oh. My 'free trial' has expired. Oh well. I don't care enough about this article or the L.A. Times to pay for their site, so I left. I spent a few minutes trying to track it down somewhere else, but no luck.
No matter because I think this is another case where I can guess what the underlying message in that 'article' is, no matter that it's all wrapped up in fluff.
I don't care about the inner message, though. The title is irritating enough. If you have ovaries and a uterus, then you should vote for someone else with a uterus and ovaries. That is the only criteria. Don't spend time or effort to consider their other qualifications. Don't worry about their character, integrity or honesty. And whatever you do, if you're a woman don't look at a man because he doesn't have those physical features. Never mind that he might actually be better qualified for the job.
There is just one woman running in this presidential race - and she is not qualified - she is resoundingly unqualified. She openly disparaged women abused by her husband - referring to them as 'bimbo eruptions' whenever new allegations surfaced. According to Kathleen Willey, one of the women Billy-Jeff groped, Hilliary was integral to the cover-ups and intimidation of the women assaulted by her husband. The Daily Caller has a short, eye-opening article on this enabling behavior:
http://dailycaller.com/2016/02/04/clinton-sexual-assault-accuser-admires-trump/
Along the same timeline, there was Filegate from Wikipedia (italics added for emphasis):
The White House FBI files controversy of the Clinton Administration, often referred to as Filegate,[1] arose in June 1996 around improper access in 1993 and 1994 to Federal Bureau of Investigation security-clearance documents. Craig Livingstone, director of the White House's Office of Personnel Security, improperly requested, and received from the FBI, background reports concerning several hundred individuals without asking permission. The revelations provoked a strong political and press reaction because many of the files covered White House employees from previous Republican administrations, including top presidential advisors. Under criticism, Livingstone resigned from his position. Allegations were made that senior White House figures, including First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, may have requested and read the files for political purposes, and that the First Lady had authorized the hiring of the underqualified Livingstone.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_House_FBI_files_controversy
So she hires someone who is underqualified for a position inside the White House. Then this underqualified individual obtains records from the Federal Bureau of Investigation - records that should never have been handed over - and she reads them. Allegedly to obtain potentially problematic information so it can be used against those individuals. This smacks to me of a police state. By what right did she - the First Lady, not a security official - look at those records? Whatever happened to privacy rights?
And she was up to her neck in that scandal according to Freedom Watch USA (italics added for emphasis):
The case, first filed in 1996 when it was discovered that the Clinton White House illegally obtained FBI files on adversaries, and used them to smear them, continues to this day. Strangely, although Mrs. Clinton is the principal defendant, and although there is sworn testimony, obtained during earlier discovery that Mrs. Clinton was the mastermind of this illegal scheme, the Court has never granted Plaintiffs requests to depose her — perhaps fearing a political backlash in the scandal ridden and "politically correct" cesspool known as Washington, D.C. But now that Mrs. Clinton has moved to try to get out of the case — undoubtedly so it does not hang over her head during her years as Secretary of State — it is mandatory that she be deposed before the Court can even consider her motion to be let out of the case. Indeed, even her husband, Bill Clinton, who was president at the time, had to be deposed in the Paula Jones case. Mrs. Clinton, as Secretary of State, ranks lower than a U.S. president and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the Jones case that even a president is subject to deposition for his illegal acts.
http://www.freedomwatchusa.org/hillary-clinton-tries-to-escape-from-on-going-filegate-case
Breitbart has an even better article that talks about Filegate, Email-Gate1 and Email-Gate2 (Benghazi):
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/03/04/hillary-clintons-long-history-of-hiding-documents/
Nancy Cohen's mindset is more than annoying. It's dangerous. Worse still, undermining this woman's credibility entirely, is that the premise of that article is just plain stupid.
Put on your hiring hat. If you are looking for a candidate for a job, would you hire someone just because she's a woman? Well, I can think of a few cases - swimsuit model, bra model, haute couture evening gown model - but Hilliary Clinton or any of the women candidates running for office aren't applying for any of those. They are applying for jobs that will give them some control over our lives.
She's already proved, through the aiding, abetting and enabling of her husband's proclivity to disrespect women by sexually assaulting them that she doesn't give a rip about women or their issues. Through Filegate, she has shown that she is perfectly happy to sit down with records the federal government keeps on citizens. Those were FBI records, but what if it happened to be your IRS filing records? Or what about your Obamacare records? They're all right there, at the government's fingertips.
That is why I want someone I can trust to do the right thing in that office.
Now I don't know about Nancy Cohen, but I don't store my brain inside my nether regions. I also have the capacity to analyze and think independently. If I thought Hilliary Clinton had one speck of anything worthwhile I'd consider her for this job. But she doesn't and I don't, so I won't.
Best~
Philippa
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories
On their home page was a link to a Los Angeles Times piece by Nancy Cohen: 'Why Women Should Vote For Women'.
On the face of it, that title is pure sexist - just as sexist as if someone named 'Norman' Cohen had written 'Why Men Should Vote for Men'.
C'mon, now, be honest. Do you think there wouldn't be screams from the scalded female contingent if that was a headline in a prominent newspaper? I can hear 'em now.
Attempting to do my due diligence, I followed the link to the L.A. Times's website where it's posted. Uh oh. My 'free trial' has expired. Oh well. I don't care enough about this article or the L.A. Times to pay for their site, so I left. I spent a few minutes trying to track it down somewhere else, but no luck.
No matter because I think this is another case where I can guess what the underlying message in that 'article' is, no matter that it's all wrapped up in fluff.
I don't care about the inner message, though. The title is irritating enough. If you have ovaries and a uterus, then you should vote for someone else with a uterus and ovaries. That is the only criteria. Don't spend time or effort to consider their other qualifications. Don't worry about their character, integrity or honesty. And whatever you do, if you're a woman don't look at a man because he doesn't have those physical features. Never mind that he might actually be better qualified for the job.
There is just one woman running in this presidential race - and she is not qualified - she is resoundingly unqualified. She openly disparaged women abused by her husband - referring to them as 'bimbo eruptions' whenever new allegations surfaced. According to Kathleen Willey, one of the women Billy-Jeff groped, Hilliary was integral to the cover-ups and intimidation of the women assaulted by her husband. The Daily Caller has a short, eye-opening article on this enabling behavior:
http://dailycaller.com/2016/02/04/clinton-sexual-assault-accuser-admires-trump/
Along the same timeline, there was Filegate from Wikipedia (italics added for emphasis):
The White House FBI files controversy of the Clinton Administration, often referred to as Filegate,[1] arose in June 1996 around improper access in 1993 and 1994 to Federal Bureau of Investigation security-clearance documents. Craig Livingstone, director of the White House's Office of Personnel Security, improperly requested, and received from the FBI, background reports concerning several hundred individuals without asking permission. The revelations provoked a strong political and press reaction because many of the files covered White House employees from previous Republican administrations, including top presidential advisors. Under criticism, Livingstone resigned from his position. Allegations were made that senior White House figures, including First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, may have requested and read the files for political purposes, and that the First Lady had authorized the hiring of the underqualified Livingstone.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_House_FBI_files_controversy
So she hires someone who is underqualified for a position inside the White House. Then this underqualified individual obtains records from the Federal Bureau of Investigation - records that should never have been handed over - and she reads them. Allegedly to obtain potentially problematic information so it can be used against those individuals. This smacks to me of a police state. By what right did she - the First Lady, not a security official - look at those records? Whatever happened to privacy rights?
And she was up to her neck in that scandal according to Freedom Watch USA (italics added for emphasis):
The case, first filed in 1996 when it was discovered that the Clinton White House illegally obtained FBI files on adversaries, and used them to smear them, continues to this day. Strangely, although Mrs. Clinton is the principal defendant, and although there is sworn testimony, obtained during earlier discovery that Mrs. Clinton was the mastermind of this illegal scheme, the Court has never granted Plaintiffs requests to depose her — perhaps fearing a political backlash in the scandal ridden and "politically correct" cesspool known as Washington, D.C. But now that Mrs. Clinton has moved to try to get out of the case — undoubtedly so it does not hang over her head during her years as Secretary of State — it is mandatory that she be deposed before the Court can even consider her motion to be let out of the case. Indeed, even her husband, Bill Clinton, who was president at the time, had to be deposed in the Paula Jones case. Mrs. Clinton, as Secretary of State, ranks lower than a U.S. president and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the Jones case that even a president is subject to deposition for his illegal acts.
http://www.freedomwatchusa.org/hillary-clinton-tries-to-escape-from-on-going-filegate-case
Breitbart has an even better article that talks about Filegate, Email-Gate1 and Email-Gate2 (Benghazi):
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/03/04/hillary-clintons-long-history-of-hiding-documents/
Nancy Cohen's mindset is more than annoying. It's dangerous. Worse still, undermining this woman's credibility entirely, is that the premise of that article is just plain stupid.
Put on your hiring hat. If you are looking for a candidate for a job, would you hire someone just because she's a woman? Well, I can think of a few cases - swimsuit model, bra model, haute couture evening gown model - but Hilliary Clinton or any of the women candidates running for office aren't applying for any of those. They are applying for jobs that will give them some control over our lives.
She's already proved, through the aiding, abetting and enabling of her husband's proclivity to disrespect women by sexually assaulting them that she doesn't give a rip about women or their issues. Through Filegate, she has shown that she is perfectly happy to sit down with records the federal government keeps on citizens. Those were FBI records, but what if it happened to be your IRS filing records? Or what about your Obamacare records? They're all right there, at the government's fingertips.
That is why I want someone I can trust to do the right thing in that office.
Now I don't know about Nancy Cohen, but I don't store my brain inside my nether regions. I also have the capacity to analyze and think independently. If I thought Hilliary Clinton had one speck of anything worthwhile I'd consider her for this job. But she doesn't and I don't, so I won't.
Best~
Philippa
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories
Thursday, April 7, 2016
I Knew Yesterday's Post Would Strike a Nerve
I may have joined Donald Trump as a serial insulter because of yesterday's post, but I stand by my position.
Two people, both acquaintances from another website whom I like and admire through what I've learned of them there, say Trump is a misogynist. I've said before that he's not, and I still don't believe that he is. Particularly after doing research for this post.
According to Merriam-Webster, misogyny is the 'hatred of women'. Just Googling the term comes back with 'a person who dislikes, despises or is strongly prejudiced against women'.
So that's the baseline. If we believe the misogynist label, Donald Trump either outright hates women, or he dislikes, despises and/or is strongly prejudiced against women - all women. Not one, not two or this one or that one or the other.
I don't buy that. I think he is an equal opportunity insulter without the sense God gave a chicken when it comes to shutting up.
If Donald Trump is a misogynist, why has he been married three times, to three women who are unarguably better looking than most and who are, independent of their marriage to him, successful?
If he hates women, why did he appoint Ivana to several high-profile positions within the Trump Organization? She was the Vice President of Interior Design and had a hand in the design of Trump Tower. In 1990, she was named Hotelier of the Year when she was president of Trump's Plaza Hotel in New York. This is hardly the profile of a weak woman, or one overrun by her husband.
And, if he 'hates' women, why did he put her in a position of apparent power? Why not show his disrespect by making her some low-level worker bee, or keep her out of his company altogether?
Marla Maples was a model who, after her divorce from The Donald, became an actress in movies and on television. She's had a radio talk show. I don't think a weak woman could be successful in the shark tanks of talk radio and Hollywood.
Melania certainly had plenty of opportunity for a successful life without Trump. She has a degree in design and architecture from University of Ljubljana, Yugoslavia. She was a successful model. She currently runs two businesses - one for jewelry sold on QVC and another for a high-end moisturizer. This is not your typical abused woman hated by her husband. She is successful in her own right and has plenty of opportunity to stand on her own two feet if things were ugly in her marriage.
Googling 'Donald and Melania Trump news' doesn't come up with lurid headlines about troubles or fights or splits or gossip. They appear to be a solid couple and the pictures of them together don't show any sign of discord. In fact, if you look at his expression in those pictures where he's looking at her, they're almost prideful. They're certainly admiring.
He's got his daughter Ivanka out there stumping for him and, according to some I've listened to on the chattering shows, she is one of his strongest advisers. Another woman whom he respects.
But those are family - of course he treats them well. Yet - if we go back to the original basis for the label, it's a universal behavior. He (supposedly) dislikes women - all inclusive. I hold that he doesn't.
Take a minute and read this article from last November's Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/donald-trump-a-champion-of-women-his-female-employees-think-so/2015/11/23/7eafac80-88da-11e5-9a07-453018f9a0ec_story.html
Or this, from Yahoo:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/whats-up-with-donald-trump-and-the-women-not-090043983.html
In this, the position I take is confirmed: Donald Trump is a serial insulter. He is even-handed in his opinions - men and women - with just two tags for people: 'Great' or 'Loser' and once on the list it's hard to get off.
Based on reading both of these articles and a few others, he is superficial in his judgement of people - appearance matters. That does not make him a misogynist, though. It just proves he is shallow. Just like most people who make snap judgements based on appearance rather than character.
After all, if you climb aboard a bus or train or a shared transport of any kind, or are even at an airport terminal waiting for a flight and you have the choice between taking the seat next to someone good looking and well groomed or someone who is, at best, lazy about their appearance, which seat will you choose?
That's a superficial judgement. For all you know that sharp well-dressed person is a perv and the lazy slob is another Einstein. Looking at these two guys in the pictures above, and given the choice of taking the empty seat, guess which I would pick. And, I suspect you'd do the same.
We all make judgements about other people's appearance. We just have the sense to keep our opinions to ourselves.
Oh, and those two guys there? One is a serial killer and the other is a multi-billionaire - Ted Bundy and Mark Cuban, respectively.
I liken Trump's behavior to Tourette's syndrome. That is a condition where a person has an inexplicable, unfortunate and uncontrollable urge to spew whatever hits their tongue no matter where they are or who they are with. Tourette's is also linked to ADHD - a tendency toward impulsive behavior. I don't believe that Trump has either of these things overtly or clinically, but based on observation - the tendency to jump from topic to topic to topic and back again, to say precisely what's front and present in his awareness, perhaps there's a touch there.
Another possibility might be found in research done by the Max Planck Institute on the psychology of speech.
It has been studied and proved that we start to speak before we decide precisely what we're going to say. Unlike in writing when we at least have the opportunity to go back and edit before releasing our wisdom into the world, speech is immediate and difficult to correct because there is a delay between our starting a sentence and what we end up deciding to say.
Perhaps Trump's linkages are weaker than most or maybe they're quicker. Instead of having time to apply the filter the majority of us use, the synapses are so fast that the words escape before his brain has a chance to intervene.
Does this excuse what he says? No. But it is one explanation and I still say that the 'misogynist' label is misapplied when it's applied to Trump. Not because I'm stubborn, but because I judge people on what I see and weigh them on what I hear. He's not perfect, not by a long stretch, but I recognize the good things about him. Based on what I've read about this particular person, I'm comfortable defending my support of him.
Does this proclivity to speak what's on his mind disqualify him from public office? I don't think so. I would much rather have someone who speaks what he thinks, even if I don't like hearing it, than have yet another snake oil salesman who thinks and rehearses every single thing and makes promises he has no intention of keeping.
In my opinion all of the other candidates in this horse race are just another snake oil salesman, aka Professional Politician.
Clinton has been in politics almost all of her adult life - from when Billy-Jeff was governor of Arkansas in the 1980s to today.
Sanders is a career politician who has been around Washington for decades, getting started as a mayor in Vermont back in the 1970's.
Cruz is another career politician - first working at the Federal Trade Commission for four years (1999 - 2003), serving as an advisor to Bush II during his campaign, working as Solicitor General of Texas and, more recently became a Senator.
None of these choices will change anything in Washington - so I would rather have a Tourette-tainted equal opportunity serial insulter in the Oval Office who might actually have the stones to get something done. At the very least it'll shake things up an awful lot.
So, with that out of the way, I hope your day is wonderful.
Best~
Philippa
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories
Two people, both acquaintances from another website whom I like and admire through what I've learned of them there, say Trump is a misogynist. I've said before that he's not, and I still don't believe that he is. Particularly after doing research for this post.
According to Merriam-Webster, misogyny is the 'hatred of women'. Just Googling the term comes back with 'a person who dislikes, despises or is strongly prejudiced against women'.
So that's the baseline. If we believe the misogynist label, Donald Trump either outright hates women, or he dislikes, despises and/or is strongly prejudiced against women - all women. Not one, not two or this one or that one or the other.
I don't buy that. I think he is an equal opportunity insulter without the sense God gave a chicken when it comes to shutting up.
If Donald Trump is a misogynist, why has he been married three times, to three women who are unarguably better looking than most and who are, independent of their marriage to him, successful?
 |
| Ivana Trump, Marla Maples, Melania Trump |
And, if he 'hates' women, why did he put her in a position of apparent power? Why not show his disrespect by making her some low-level worker bee, or keep her out of his company altogether?
Marla Maples was a model who, after her divorce from The Donald, became an actress in movies and on television. She's had a radio talk show. I don't think a weak woman could be successful in the shark tanks of talk radio and Hollywood.
Melania certainly had plenty of opportunity for a successful life without Trump. She has a degree in design and architecture from University of Ljubljana, Yugoslavia. She was a successful model. She currently runs two businesses - one for jewelry sold on QVC and another for a high-end moisturizer. This is not your typical abused woman hated by her husband. She is successful in her own right and has plenty of opportunity to stand on her own two feet if things were ugly in her marriage.
Googling 'Donald and Melania Trump news' doesn't come up with lurid headlines about troubles or fights or splits or gossip. They appear to be a solid couple and the pictures of them together don't show any sign of discord. In fact, if you look at his expression in those pictures where he's looking at her, they're almost prideful. They're certainly admiring.
He's got his daughter Ivanka out there stumping for him and, according to some I've listened to on the chattering shows, she is one of his strongest advisers. Another woman whom he respects.
But those are family - of course he treats them well. Yet - if we go back to the original basis for the label, it's a universal behavior. He (supposedly) dislikes women - all inclusive. I hold that he doesn't.
Take a minute and read this article from last November's Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/donald-trump-a-champion-of-women-his-female-employees-think-so/2015/11/23/7eafac80-88da-11e5-9a07-453018f9a0ec_story.html
Or this, from Yahoo:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/whats-up-with-donald-trump-and-the-women-not-090043983.html
In this, the position I take is confirmed: Donald Trump is a serial insulter. He is even-handed in his opinions - men and women - with just two tags for people: 'Great' or 'Loser' and once on the list it's hard to get off.
Based on reading both of these articles and a few others, he is superficial in his judgement of people - appearance matters. That does not make him a misogynist, though. It just proves he is shallow. Just like most people who make snap judgements based on appearance rather than character.
After all, if you climb aboard a bus or train or a shared transport of any kind, or are even at an airport terminal waiting for a flight and you have the choice between taking the seat next to someone good looking and well groomed or someone who is, at best, lazy about their appearance, which seat will you choose?
That's a superficial judgement. For all you know that sharp well-dressed person is a perv and the lazy slob is another Einstein. Looking at these two guys in the pictures above, and given the choice of taking the empty seat, guess which I would pick. And, I suspect you'd do the same.
We all make judgements about other people's appearance. We just have the sense to keep our opinions to ourselves.
Oh, and those two guys there? One is a serial killer and the other is a multi-billionaire - Ted Bundy and Mark Cuban, respectively.
I liken Trump's behavior to Tourette's syndrome. That is a condition where a person has an inexplicable, unfortunate and uncontrollable urge to spew whatever hits their tongue no matter where they are or who they are with. Tourette's is also linked to ADHD - a tendency toward impulsive behavior. I don't believe that Trump has either of these things overtly or clinically, but based on observation - the tendency to jump from topic to topic to topic and back again, to say precisely what's front and present in his awareness, perhaps there's a touch there.
Another possibility might be found in research done by the Max Planck Institute on the psychology of speech.
It has been studied and proved that we start to speak before we decide precisely what we're going to say. Unlike in writing when we at least have the opportunity to go back and edit before releasing our wisdom into the world, speech is immediate and difficult to correct because there is a delay between our starting a sentence and what we end up deciding to say.
Perhaps Trump's linkages are weaker than most or maybe they're quicker. Instead of having time to apply the filter the majority of us use, the synapses are so fast that the words escape before his brain has a chance to intervene.
Does this excuse what he says? No. But it is one explanation and I still say that the 'misogynist' label is misapplied when it's applied to Trump. Not because I'm stubborn, but because I judge people on what I see and weigh them on what I hear. He's not perfect, not by a long stretch, but I recognize the good things about him. Based on what I've read about this particular person, I'm comfortable defending my support of him.
Does this proclivity to speak what's on his mind disqualify him from public office? I don't think so. I would much rather have someone who speaks what he thinks, even if I don't like hearing it, than have yet another snake oil salesman who thinks and rehearses every single thing and makes promises he has no intention of keeping.
In my opinion all of the other candidates in this horse race are just another snake oil salesman, aka Professional Politician.
Clinton has been in politics almost all of her adult life - from when Billy-Jeff was governor of Arkansas in the 1980s to today.
Sanders is a career politician who has been around Washington for decades, getting started as a mayor in Vermont back in the 1970's.
Cruz is another career politician - first working at the Federal Trade Commission for four years (1999 - 2003), serving as an advisor to Bush II during his campaign, working as Solicitor General of Texas and, more recently became a Senator.
None of these choices will change anything in Washington - so I would rather have a Tourette-tainted equal opportunity serial insulter in the Oval Office who might actually have the stones to get something done. At the very least it'll shake things up an awful lot.
So, with that out of the way, I hope your day is wonderful.
Best~
Philippa
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories
Wednesday, April 6, 2016
Ladies, May I Have Your Attention For Minute?
I am going to speak plainly about Donald Trump and his alleged problem with women. Dead honest in my opinion: it is not his problem. It's ours, the women, who are the problem.
America has bigger problems than ugly words. These problems are real and have nothing whatsoever to do with 'feeling' or 'emotion'. They are existential and they are going to make or break this country in the next few years. Either America gets itself back on its feet or we go under. It is that serious in my view.
Are you better off today than you were ten or twelve years ago? I genuinely hope you can answer yes to that, but I sincerely doubt you can, honestly.
Do you feel more secure, as settled and as comfortable as you did ten or twelve years ago? Or are you like me and like millions of others like me? Do you, as I do, worry about tomorrow and next week, never mind next year or retirement?
Do you worry about your kids' future? Do you wonder if they're going to be able to live and work and enjoy their lives as you used to do?
What about your grandchildren? Are they going to live the kind of life you want for them?
Given these problems, don't we have bigger fish to fry than to worry about someone saying stupid or ugly things about people?
I don't like everything Trump says but I recognize an ass is an ass is an ass and he tends to hit that mark too often for my comfort, but then I look past it - to those big existential threats to our security and well-being.
You know the problems in your own life. Your home - probably still under-water compared to your mortgage and its value. Your job - are you secure, confident you'll still have a job a year from now? How's that retirement looking?
What about your kids? How are they doing? Did they go to college and pile up a mountain of debt and find a job in their field that pays enough for them to pay that debt down - or are they working somewhere in the service industry?
This country is faced with big existential problems, yet I listen to the chattering class on television and all they're talking about (so it seems) is Donald Trump's "trouble with women".
And what is that "trouble" do we suppose? Well I know exactly what it is. Women get upset when someone says something stupid or ugly. Or they get upset by it because they take it personally and then can't get over themselves far enough to recognize that an ass is an ass is an ass and what he says does not have to be taken seriously.
Given the real and existential problems in this country, does it really matter that Trump made ugly remarks about Rosie O'Donnell (who deserved them) or Carly Fiorina or anyone else? Aren't we bigger than that?
After all, if talking nice would solve all the problems in the world - hunger and unemployment and the housing situation and international warfare and trade and the like, hell, I'd be all over him too. But it doesn't and it won't.
The sad reality is that while words have meaning and they can hurt our feelings, those words cannot solve the bigger issues in front of us.
Yes, negotiation is a matter of words but I suspect, given the number of sensitive negotiations Trump has been involved with, he knows what words work and what don't.
Yes, diplomacy is a matter of words - but I am not looking for the next Diplomat. I am looking for the next President. I am quite confident that in the setting of delicate negotiation, Trump is perfectly capable of being delicate, of saying the right thing at the right time in the right way.
Personally, I do not give the first little rip about what Donald Trump says - he can spew ugliness all day long for all I care because when he stops talking, I do care about what he can do for this country if we give him a chance. And, based on the choices from this smorgasbord, he is the only person who can get things back on track and rolling again.
Given the big problems facing this country I ask you: do you really want more of the same or do you want something better?
Ladies, if you want more of the same, knock yourself out but do not whine around about how bad things still are four years from now. You will have asked for it.
Best~
Philippa
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories
America has bigger problems than ugly words. These problems are real and have nothing whatsoever to do with 'feeling' or 'emotion'. They are existential and they are going to make or break this country in the next few years. Either America gets itself back on its feet or we go under. It is that serious in my view.
Are you better off today than you were ten or twelve years ago? I genuinely hope you can answer yes to that, but I sincerely doubt you can, honestly.
Do you feel more secure, as settled and as comfortable as you did ten or twelve years ago? Or are you like me and like millions of others like me? Do you, as I do, worry about tomorrow and next week, never mind next year or retirement?
Do you worry about your kids' future? Do you wonder if they're going to be able to live and work and enjoy their lives as you used to do?
What about your grandchildren? Are they going to live the kind of life you want for them?
Given these problems, don't we have bigger fish to fry than to worry about someone saying stupid or ugly things about people?
I don't like everything Trump says but I recognize an ass is an ass is an ass and he tends to hit that mark too often for my comfort, but then I look past it - to those big existential threats to our security and well-being.
You know the problems in your own life. Your home - probably still under-water compared to your mortgage and its value. Your job - are you secure, confident you'll still have a job a year from now? How's that retirement looking?
What about your kids? How are they doing? Did they go to college and pile up a mountain of debt and find a job in their field that pays enough for them to pay that debt down - or are they working somewhere in the service industry?
This country is faced with big existential problems, yet I listen to the chattering class on television and all they're talking about (so it seems) is Donald Trump's "trouble with women".
And what is that "trouble" do we suppose? Well I know exactly what it is. Women get upset when someone says something stupid or ugly. Or they get upset by it because they take it personally and then can't get over themselves far enough to recognize that an ass is an ass is an ass and what he says does not have to be taken seriously.
Given the real and existential problems in this country, does it really matter that Trump made ugly remarks about Rosie O'Donnell (who deserved them) or Carly Fiorina or anyone else? Aren't we bigger than that?
After all, if talking nice would solve all the problems in the world - hunger and unemployment and the housing situation and international warfare and trade and the like, hell, I'd be all over him too. But it doesn't and it won't.
The sad reality is that while words have meaning and they can hurt our feelings, those words cannot solve the bigger issues in front of us.
Yes, negotiation is a matter of words but I suspect, given the number of sensitive negotiations Trump has been involved with, he knows what words work and what don't.
Yes, diplomacy is a matter of words - but I am not looking for the next Diplomat. I am looking for the next President. I am quite confident that in the setting of delicate negotiation, Trump is perfectly capable of being delicate, of saying the right thing at the right time in the right way.
Personally, I do not give the first little rip about what Donald Trump says - he can spew ugliness all day long for all I care because when he stops talking, I do care about what he can do for this country if we give him a chance. And, based on the choices from this smorgasbord, he is the only person who can get things back on track and rolling again.
Given the big problems facing this country I ask you: do you really want more of the same or do you want something better?
Ladies, if you want more of the same, knock yourself out but do not whine around about how bad things still are four years from now. You will have asked for it.
Best~
Philippa
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories
Tuesday, April 5, 2016
Let's Take a Break & Play A Game
Let's all take a big deep breath, okay? It's only April - just a couple of months into the 'political season' - and I'm already tired. This has been a hellacious week for my candidate and it's not letting up.
Everything from 'humunah, humunah, humunah' from Trump and a refusal to deny from Cruz.
For Trump it was abortion and nukes. Trump tried to talk it back.
For Cruz it's the National Enquirer and allegations that he's been getting some on the side. Cruz refused to deny.
Nonetheless, as usual, Trump is leading the pack in media mentions - but that's as it always is because the man simply doesn't know when to zip his lip. He's a good guy - I'd bet my life on it - but he talks too damned much and this week has been worse than usual.
Past stuff is well-known. Offering to pay legal fees for brawl participants. That has been a never-ending story. More recently though are his tongue-stomps on abortion. He didn't just trip over his tongue - he stomped on it and it was not pretty.
However, the media double-standard is staggering.
While the MSM has been blasting Trump non-stop for speaking badly, they just ignored that Ted Cruz framed a joke that really isn't that funny. On Jimmy Kimmel's show, he suggested that he would like to back a car over Donald Trump. Now if he had said that about Hilliary or Berns or Obie-One, the MSM would have been all over it - and not in a good way. But no, because it was Trump, that's okay. No one mentioned it - it got a complete pass.
I hate double-standards. In my world, fair is fair. That means you cannot say one thing and do another. If you're going to hold Person A to a standard, Person B has to be held to that same standard. It annoys the hell out of me that the media just doesn't get that. Instead, they're out there doing what they always do - making something out of nothing to Donald Trump's detriment.
So... ahhhh. After that deep cleansing breath, let's play a game. It's the Hiring Game. I'll lay out the rules as we go. Put on your thinking cap and think about your answers - don't just answer off the cuff. Okay, ready? Here we go.
You are screening people for an important job. You started with twenty applicants and are now down to just four. All four are viable prospects. There's another, over there, behind the screen - but he's not really viable. He just refuses to leave. The others are real possibilities but each has their problems and there are no other options. You've been watching them for weeks, filtering through what they've said and done, and here's what you've learned:
Applicant One is a compulsive liar and he's mean - a bully. During the first interview phase, he sent out a mailer that shamed people, made them feel bullied if they didn't do what he wanted them to do. He lied about another potential candidate, and got away with it. He has, arguably, made a death threat about another person under consideration - and got away with that, too. Recently, you've heard rumors that he's been unfaithful to his wife - and he has not come out and denied it, even when he's been asked directly. The most he's done is call the story 'garbage'.
Applicant Two is running from a felony conviction. She mishandled confidential information, data that was so sensitive that its getting out there into the world could cost people their lives. Now she's praying that her former boss will protect her from criminal indictment, but it looks like it might be a losing battle.
Applicant Three is a self-admitted spendthrift. He just loves spending other people's money without restraint. He will take your money, even though you've hired him, and he will give it away to anyone and everyone who holds out their hand. He has no idea, after you run out of money, how he's going to keep that gravy train going - tax the rich only goes so far, after all. But that's okay. Now, this moment, is all that counts.
Applicant Four is fundamentally honest, often too honest. Instead of filtering his words, he almost always says exactly what he thinks, regardless of whether or not those words are in his best interest. Some people take offense to what he says, and then spend days whinging about it.
The media has been sniffing around his ankles, searching for any major or minor chink in his armor, but haven't found anything except the words he chooses to use. If they could find something, anything, other than what's publicly known, they would use it with glee, but so far, their searching and probing hasn't revealed anything
Good, bad or indifferent, these are the final four candidates for this important job. 1) A liar, bully and cheat; 2) a criminal; 3) a spendthrift; and 4) an unbridled tongue. Which one will you hire?
I know which one I prefer, but that's me. So let's look a little more closely at our options, shall we?
Candidate Number 1: A first term Senator. As far as we know he's no better than the last first term Senator who held this post.
That guy was purely incompetent - in over his head at every turn, doing the wrong thing every time he made a move - a visit to Cuba and attending a ballgame instead of coming back to work when one of our allies was under attack. Doing the wave with the Cuban dictator and the tango with Argentina's first lady. Making a deal with an untrustworthy opponent, and not enforcing the conditions when that opponent repeatedly violates that deal that is now being closely scrutinized by Congress.
This candidate is hoping to replace that first term Senator, but he's a first term Senator, too. He has no more real world experience than the last guy. Will he be any better?
On top of that, he's proven himself to be a liar. Lying about that other candidate's dropping from the job interview process. Lying about the other interviewees.
Last, but nowhere close to least, is that he's being accused of messing around with women not his wife. How can someone trust a guy who will toss his own wife and children to the side in his rush to boff another Babe or two? How loyal will he be to you and me? A stellar character, to be sure.
Candidate Number Two: Hilliary Clinton's woes are well-known. 'nuff said.
Candidate Number Three: Freebies for everyone for everything and no idea how to pay for them.
Taxing the rich won't do it - they don't have enough money for pay for all the free stuff Bernie is promising. Even if Washington took everything everyone with anything owns, it wouldn't be enough. Free medical care, free education and, I'm sure when the demand gets loud enough, free housing. No one will have to work or pay taxes because everything will be free, right?
Candidate Number Four: He's a shoot-from-the-lip specialist. He says what's on his mind, no filter and that causes problems. He's also loyal - a good quality for which he doesn't get credit.
When one of his employees did what the Secret Service should have done, he stood by his man. After all, the guy hadn't been convicted in a court of law - just in the court of public opinion. He also didn't rat out the Secret Service - which wasn't doing his job when this employee did what they should have done. That's honorable. It shows loyalty - a character trait I respect and value.
On the other hand, he does speak too openly, too often without thinking things through or considering what he should say instead of what he really believes. That's causing him problems - and it's all that gets talked about - until I have to shut off my television because I'm so sick of the distortion that I want to puke.
So of these, given that these are your only choices, which would you hire?
Okay, ready? Now answer the fundamental question: Why would you pick that individual over the others? What makes your pick more palatable or viable than any of the others?
Fair questions, right?
Even if Trump were to get into office and put forward a SCOTUS nominee, do you not suppose the Senate Judiciary Committee who has 'yea' or 'nay' power over that nomination wouldn't question the candidate long and hard on this issue? That committee is not a purely right-wing body - it is run by the party that controls the Senate but includes people of all mindsets. It is not a rubber-stamp for any presidential nominee. The likelihood that abortion will be overturned, become a criminal act, is just about 0.0000%. The American people who support or at least acknowledge the need for it won't stand for its repeal.
Personally, I am aligned with Trump on the evil nature of the act - I do not agree with punishing the women or their doctors. It's an evil necessity and while I was once a pro-abortion thinker, my attitude has changed. It has evolved. From being pro-abortion I went to the opposite end of the spectrum - no abortion for any reason. Then, I've softened and now, while I still don't like it, I understand the necessity for it.
I suggest that before you walk into the voting booth this season that you sit down and stop and think about why you're picking one candidate over another. Get past the emotional 'feel-good-ism' - I like this guy. Answer the questions: what makes him like-worthy and will he be better than the other guy?
So that's the hiring game. Not fun but important and I hope you played along thoughtfully.
Best~
Philippa
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories
Everything from 'humunah, humunah, humunah' from Trump and a refusal to deny from Cruz.
For Trump it was abortion and nukes. Trump tried to talk it back.
For Cruz it's the National Enquirer and allegations that he's been getting some on the side. Cruz refused to deny.
Nonetheless, as usual, Trump is leading the pack in media mentions - but that's as it always is because the man simply doesn't know when to zip his lip. He's a good guy - I'd bet my life on it - but he talks too damned much and this week has been worse than usual.
Past stuff is well-known. Offering to pay legal fees for brawl participants. That has been a never-ending story. More recently though are his tongue-stomps on abortion. He didn't just trip over his tongue - he stomped on it and it was not pretty.
However, the media double-standard is staggering.
While the MSM has been blasting Trump non-stop for speaking badly, they just ignored that Ted Cruz framed a joke that really isn't that funny. On Jimmy Kimmel's show, he suggested that he would like to back a car over Donald Trump. Now if he had said that about Hilliary or Berns or Obie-One, the MSM would have been all over it - and not in a good way. But no, because it was Trump, that's okay. No one mentioned it - it got a complete pass.
I hate double-standards. In my world, fair is fair. That means you cannot say one thing and do another. If you're going to hold Person A to a standard, Person B has to be held to that same standard. It annoys the hell out of me that the media just doesn't get that. Instead, they're out there doing what they always do - making something out of nothing to Donald Trump's detriment.
So... ahhhh. After that deep cleansing breath, let's play a game. It's the Hiring Game. I'll lay out the rules as we go. Put on your thinking cap and think about your answers - don't just answer off the cuff. Okay, ready? Here we go.
You are screening people for an important job. You started with twenty applicants and are now down to just four. All four are viable prospects. There's another, over there, behind the screen - but he's not really viable. He just refuses to leave. The others are real possibilities but each has their problems and there are no other options. You've been watching them for weeks, filtering through what they've said and done, and here's what you've learned:
Applicant One is a compulsive liar and he's mean - a bully. During the first interview phase, he sent out a mailer that shamed people, made them feel bullied if they didn't do what he wanted them to do. He lied about another potential candidate, and got away with it. He has, arguably, made a death threat about another person under consideration - and got away with that, too. Recently, you've heard rumors that he's been unfaithful to his wife - and he has not come out and denied it, even when he's been asked directly. The most he's done is call the story 'garbage'.
Applicant Two is running from a felony conviction. She mishandled confidential information, data that was so sensitive that its getting out there into the world could cost people their lives. Now she's praying that her former boss will protect her from criminal indictment, but it looks like it might be a losing battle.
Applicant Three is a self-admitted spendthrift. He just loves spending other people's money without restraint. He will take your money, even though you've hired him, and he will give it away to anyone and everyone who holds out their hand. He has no idea, after you run out of money, how he's going to keep that gravy train going - tax the rich only goes so far, after all. But that's okay. Now, this moment, is all that counts.
Applicant Four is fundamentally honest, often too honest. Instead of filtering his words, he almost always says exactly what he thinks, regardless of whether or not those words are in his best interest. Some people take offense to what he says, and then spend days whinging about it.
The media has been sniffing around his ankles, searching for any major or minor chink in his armor, but haven't found anything except the words he chooses to use. If they could find something, anything, other than what's publicly known, they would use it with glee, but so far, their searching and probing hasn't revealed anything
Good, bad or indifferent, these are the final four candidates for this important job. 1) A liar, bully and cheat; 2) a criminal; 3) a spendthrift; and 4) an unbridled tongue. Which one will you hire?
I know which one I prefer, but that's me. So let's look a little more closely at our options, shall we?
Candidate Number 1: A first term Senator. As far as we know he's no better than the last first term Senator who held this post.
That guy was purely incompetent - in over his head at every turn, doing the wrong thing every time he made a move - a visit to Cuba and attending a ballgame instead of coming back to work when one of our allies was under attack. Doing the wave with the Cuban dictator and the tango with Argentina's first lady. Making a deal with an untrustworthy opponent, and not enforcing the conditions when that opponent repeatedly violates that deal that is now being closely scrutinized by Congress.
This candidate is hoping to replace that first term Senator, but he's a first term Senator, too. He has no more real world experience than the last guy. Will he be any better?
On top of that, he's proven himself to be a liar. Lying about that other candidate's dropping from the job interview process. Lying about the other interviewees.
Last, but nowhere close to least, is that he's being accused of messing around with women not his wife. How can someone trust a guy who will toss his own wife and children to the side in his rush to boff another Babe or two? How loyal will he be to you and me? A stellar character, to be sure.
Candidate Number Two: Hilliary Clinton's woes are well-known. 'nuff said.
Candidate Number Three: Freebies for everyone for everything and no idea how to pay for them.
Taxing the rich won't do it - they don't have enough money for pay for all the free stuff Bernie is promising. Even if Washington took everything everyone with anything owns, it wouldn't be enough. Free medical care, free education and, I'm sure when the demand gets loud enough, free housing. No one will have to work or pay taxes because everything will be free, right?
Candidate Number Four: He's a shoot-from-the-lip specialist. He says what's on his mind, no filter and that causes problems. He's also loyal - a good quality for which he doesn't get credit.
When one of his employees did what the Secret Service should have done, he stood by his man. After all, the guy hadn't been convicted in a court of law - just in the court of public opinion. He also didn't rat out the Secret Service - which wasn't doing his job when this employee did what they should have done. That's honorable. It shows loyalty - a character trait I respect and value.
On the other hand, he does speak too openly, too often without thinking things through or considering what he should say instead of what he really believes. That's causing him problems - and it's all that gets talked about - until I have to shut off my television because I'm so sick of the distortion that I want to puke.
So of these, given that these are your only choices, which would you hire?
Okay, ready? Now answer the fundamental question: Why would you pick that individual over the others? What makes your pick more palatable or viable than any of the others?
Fair questions, right?
Even if Trump were to get into office and put forward a SCOTUS nominee, do you not suppose the Senate Judiciary Committee who has 'yea' or 'nay' power over that nomination wouldn't question the candidate long and hard on this issue? That committee is not a purely right-wing body - it is run by the party that controls the Senate but includes people of all mindsets. It is not a rubber-stamp for any presidential nominee. The likelihood that abortion will be overturned, become a criminal act, is just about 0.0000%. The American people who support or at least acknowledge the need for it won't stand for its repeal.
Personally, I am aligned with Trump on the evil nature of the act - I do not agree with punishing the women or their doctors. It's an evil necessity and while I was once a pro-abortion thinker, my attitude has changed. It has evolved. From being pro-abortion I went to the opposite end of the spectrum - no abortion for any reason. Then, I've softened and now, while I still don't like it, I understand the necessity for it.
I suggest that before you walk into the voting booth this season that you sit down and stop and think about why you're picking one candidate over another. Get past the emotional 'feel-good-ism' - I like this guy. Answer the questions: what makes him like-worthy and will he be better than the other guy?
So that's the hiring game. Not fun but important and I hope you played along thoughtfully.
Best~
Philippa
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories
Monday, April 4, 2016
Why Donald Trump Is Right About the Economy
Oops, he's done it again... Trump is saying that we're heading for a very big, very bad recession and... he's right.
There are two schools of economic thought. Most common is Keynesian economics which have gotten us into the economic pickle we're in. Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, Janet Yellen - all the Federal Reserve and Treasury wonks subscribe to Keynesian theory because, for governments, it's easy. Just print your way to prosperity. Never mind that by printing more and more bills you're diluting the value of the currency.
You and I, however, don't have the luxury of having a printing press to try printing our way out of debt. We live in the real world and it's the real world economy Trump is talking about when he says things are iffy. He is absolutely 100% right - about the stock market, the currencies and the rest of it.
In the real world you and I can't just print more money to pay off our debt. We have to keep our balance sheet in balance - assets and liabilities - and have a means of paying off the debt we acquire.
In the Keynesian world, you don't. That is the fundamental break-point and it's important for understanding the bigger picture.
For years the United States has been able to sell our treasury bills. Those are pledges that in exchange for a loan we will repay the money at a future date, plus interest. We were good with that because we were seen as a strong economy, solid as a rock with the full faith and credit.
Then things went south in the mid-2000s. The recession came along and everyone got nervous. China and the OPEC countries started grumbling. They don't like their currencies pegged to our dollar in the foreign exchange (FOREX where currencies are traded) world. Their currencies suffered by comparison because anyone who wanted to buy a 'strong' currency would invest in the dollar.
They started manipulating their currencies. The Yuan in particular. And they talked about changing the FOREX 'rules' so that OPEC would no longer sell its oil based on the value of the US dollar but on the Yuan or the Ruble.
So, without getting too far into the weeds, we are a Keynesian economy on which other economies are based through their various currencies. If we go under we will take many of the other world economies with us. The EU and the British pound will probably be badly hurt, but they are strong enough to survive. It's the other nations, to whom the US has sold treasury bills by the trillions, that will get 'killed'. If we go under, they will be holding stacks and stacks and stacks of worthless paper.
That is the risk here - that is why Trump is saying we are on the verge of a collapse.
At this point the United States is in general debt to the tune of about twenty trillion dollars.
Our REAL debt, though, including those entitlements you hear talk about, is closer to seventy trillion dollars. That is unsustainable - even under Keynesian theory because even under Keynesian economics, that is outstanding debt and if it's called... guess what happens to the almighty dollar?
We can't repay it. There's no way in a million years (literally) we can repay it. We would default and if we default on that debt, the entire world will follow. We will have zero credit and zero credibility. No one will want our money. No one will want to buy our debt - which is reflected in those treasury bills.
This morning, when I turned on the news, the talking heads were talking about their 'confusion' over Trump's statement. The 'economists are scratching their heads' was one line.
When most people hear the label 'economist' they think 'uber-smart know-it-all' regarding all things financial. What they lose sight of is the fact that before they are economists, those people are just people. They're not smarter than you or I. It's just that they just went to school and studied economics. Then they got a piece of parchment that says 'Economics'. They aren't necessarily smarter than the average bear. They just like numbers and their inter-relationships.
I like numbers, too. I like reading about money and currencies and politics and how they're all interrelated. So I pay attention to money and the markets - including gold and silver and the Baltic Dry Index (BDI).
That last is an important 'little' thing. It's an indicator of international shipping which means trade.
When China or South Korea needs to make a widget, they have to buy raw materials or parts from other places - no one country can produce all the elements that go into their widgets, so they import them. Containers are loaded up with boxes and bales and bags of widget parts. Those containers are loaded onto a ship and moved from here to there.
Once the widget is made - be it a laptop, a computer, a television or a toy, the finished good is loaded into another container and loaded onto another ship and shipped to wherever there are consumers willing and able to buy those finished goods.
This shipping is what the BDI tracks. If the BDI is high, there's a lot of movement - economies are trading money for goods and materials. If the BDI is low, that indicates a lot of those very expensive ships are sitting idle. Trade is not happening, no one is buying raw materials or shipping finished goods - and that's a sign of a weak world economy.
In the past couple of months, the BDI hit all time lows - and stayed there for weeks. Ships were sitting empty and idle in ports around the world. Even the Panama Canal has been affected - recently offering a 30% discount for ships passing through the canal.
Ship & Bunker, the trade magazine, has a recent article that advises against excitement over the recent surge in the utilization of hulls - 30% of ships are still sitting idle. Even though 70% of ships are in use, that 30% is still putting a heavy strain on shipping companies and their lenders - those ships still have debt on them and that debt has to be repaid.
http://shipandbunker.com/news/world/441019-dont-be-fooled-by-april-1-surge-in-baltic-dry-index-analyst-warns
That's one economic indicator. If goods aren't being bought and sold, money isn't being exchanged and that is not good for the world economy.
Closer to home, these economists are pointing at the "good" unemployment rate - the recent increase in jobs, even though the unemployment rate ticked up to 5% last week and will likely be adjusted higher in a week or ten days. That 5% is a completely pulled from thin air number, though. It's happy talk for the folks and here's why I say that.
This is a screenshot that I took from usdebtclock.org this morning:
http://usdebtclock.org/
Let's look a little closer at this, shall we?
In 2000 the median income - the average annual earnings per household across America - was $28,302. Today, April 4, 2016, the median income is $30,171 - just a little more than $14 per hour but they buying power of that $14 is much less than it was in 2000. Think back - in 2000 you could probably buy a nice lunch in most cities in America and have money left over from $10. Now I'd challenge you to find a nice lunch for less than $15 - that's inflation.
Based on the rate of inflation - generally considered to be an average of about 3% per year - median income should be $22.59 per hour now. But it's not. That screenshot is from just this morning and it's reflective of reality. So wages aren't exactly robust.
There is also the comparison between the "Official Unemployed" of 7,959,124 and the "Real Unemployed" of 15,592,681 - almost twice as many people are unemployed as the government says. Which puts the real unemployment rate closer to 10% than to the official number of 5%.
Don't take my word for this - just Google 'real unemployment rate'. Warning: look past the government sites - they have a vested interest in selling you snake oil, so look at CNBC, Bloomberg or one of the other financial sites. They're still to be taken with a grain of salt because they have a vested interest in painting a rosier picture than reality, but they're a bit more trustworthy.
In that screenshot are a few more esoteric indicators.
The number of uninsured - which indicates that there are more than forty million people who cannot afford the insurance premiums that they are required to pay under Obamacare. They're working but are caught between the rock and a hard place of their earnings and the cost of the insurance premiums. They earn too much to qualify for the government subsidy, but too little to be able to afford the premiums. People like me.
Consider your own situation because you're little different than your neighbors or friends. If you are doing better now than you were ten years ago, good for you - I'm thrilled. I'm willing to wager that you're not, though. How's your personal economy doing? How are your wages compared to ten years ago? Are you earning more now than you were ten years ago?
Those are the economic indicators that really matter. The stock market is manipulated - it's run by the investment houses and banks but it's controlled by the Federal Reserve (Central Bank that runs all of the world economies when you get down to brass tacks) and the US Treasury department. They have a little thing instituted during the early days of the 2007 / 2008 Recession.
Remember Quantitative Easing - QE and QE 1 and QE 2, etc? Well, that's part of it - it's called Permanent Open Market Operations (POMO).
To prevent the stock market from having wild swings as the markets change and people get confident or scared - pull their money or invest it - that POMO was put in place.
When the market drops significantly - more than a hundred points or so - the Treasury steps in. They infuse 'money' in the form of code (1's and 0's) to stabilize it. If it soars, they'll let it go because it looks good to the folks.
The real value of the DOW Jones, if it wasn't manipulated as it's been over the past ten years or so, would probably be in the range of 10,000 to 12,000 points. There is nothing supporting what you see when you look at the markets - there is no real intrinsic value and nothing in the fundamental net worth of those companies to support the current 17,500 level in the market.
Don't believe me? Well, first look up POMO. It's there in Google. Read about it (although I warn you: it's dry as dust and you'll probably want to throttle me for suggesting the read). Then do some research. Talk to a financial adviser you trust - one who's not selling you something because if he's your broker or if he's selling you something, he's got a vested interest in lying to you about it. After all, if you think that the DOW will head toward 30,000 wouldn't you buy?
So Donald isn't wrong. He might be premature, but he is not wrong because there is nothing supporting this economy. We're a lot like Wiley E. Coyote in the Bugs Bunny cartoons. As long as we don't look down, look for the underpinning that's holding us up, we're fine. Once we realize that we're treading on thin air... look out!
Do some reading and research. Talk to people knowledgeable about this stuff. Listen carefully to the talking heads who discuss stuff like this. The contradictions between what they say - the excuses they use - are so commonplace you'll soon realize the truth.
Best~
Philippa
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories
There are two schools of economic thought. Most common is Keynesian economics which have gotten us into the economic pickle we're in. Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, Janet Yellen - all the Federal Reserve and Treasury wonks subscribe to Keynesian theory because, for governments, it's easy. Just print your way to prosperity. Never mind that by printing more and more bills you're diluting the value of the currency.
You and I, however, don't have the luxury of having a printing press to try printing our way out of debt. We live in the real world and it's the real world economy Trump is talking about when he says things are iffy. He is absolutely 100% right - about the stock market, the currencies and the rest of it.
In the real world you and I can't just print more money to pay off our debt. We have to keep our balance sheet in balance - assets and liabilities - and have a means of paying off the debt we acquire.
In the Keynesian world, you don't. That is the fundamental break-point and it's important for understanding the bigger picture.
For years the United States has been able to sell our treasury bills. Those are pledges that in exchange for a loan we will repay the money at a future date, plus interest. We were good with that because we were seen as a strong economy, solid as a rock with the full faith and credit.
Then things went south in the mid-2000s. The recession came along and everyone got nervous. China and the OPEC countries started grumbling. They don't like their currencies pegged to our dollar in the foreign exchange (FOREX where currencies are traded) world. Their currencies suffered by comparison because anyone who wanted to buy a 'strong' currency would invest in the dollar.
They started manipulating their currencies. The Yuan in particular. And they talked about changing the FOREX 'rules' so that OPEC would no longer sell its oil based on the value of the US dollar but on the Yuan or the Ruble.
So, without getting too far into the weeds, we are a Keynesian economy on which other economies are based through their various currencies. If we go under we will take many of the other world economies with us. The EU and the British pound will probably be badly hurt, but they are strong enough to survive. It's the other nations, to whom the US has sold treasury bills by the trillions, that will get 'killed'. If we go under, they will be holding stacks and stacks and stacks of worthless paper.
That is the risk here - that is why Trump is saying we are on the verge of a collapse.
At this point the United States is in general debt to the tune of about twenty trillion dollars.
Our REAL debt, though, including those entitlements you hear talk about, is closer to seventy trillion dollars. That is unsustainable - even under Keynesian theory because even under Keynesian economics, that is outstanding debt and if it's called... guess what happens to the almighty dollar?
We can't repay it. There's no way in a million years (literally) we can repay it. We would default and if we default on that debt, the entire world will follow. We will have zero credit and zero credibility. No one will want our money. No one will want to buy our debt - which is reflected in those treasury bills.
This morning, when I turned on the news, the talking heads were talking about their 'confusion' over Trump's statement. The 'economists are scratching their heads' was one line.
When most people hear the label 'economist' they think 'uber-smart know-it-all' regarding all things financial. What they lose sight of is the fact that before they are economists, those people are just people. They're not smarter than you or I. It's just that they just went to school and studied economics. Then they got a piece of parchment that says 'Economics'. They aren't necessarily smarter than the average bear. They just like numbers and their inter-relationships.
I like numbers, too. I like reading about money and currencies and politics and how they're all interrelated. So I pay attention to money and the markets - including gold and silver and the Baltic Dry Index (BDI).
That last is an important 'little' thing. It's an indicator of international shipping which means trade.
When China or South Korea needs to make a widget, they have to buy raw materials or parts from other places - no one country can produce all the elements that go into their widgets, so they import them. Containers are loaded up with boxes and bales and bags of widget parts. Those containers are loaded onto a ship and moved from here to there.
Once the widget is made - be it a laptop, a computer, a television or a toy, the finished good is loaded into another container and loaded onto another ship and shipped to wherever there are consumers willing and able to buy those finished goods.
This shipping is what the BDI tracks. If the BDI is high, there's a lot of movement - economies are trading money for goods and materials. If the BDI is low, that indicates a lot of those very expensive ships are sitting idle. Trade is not happening, no one is buying raw materials or shipping finished goods - and that's a sign of a weak world economy.
In the past couple of months, the BDI hit all time lows - and stayed there for weeks. Ships were sitting empty and idle in ports around the world. Even the Panama Canal has been affected - recently offering a 30% discount for ships passing through the canal.
Ship & Bunker, the trade magazine, has a recent article that advises against excitement over the recent surge in the utilization of hulls - 30% of ships are still sitting idle. Even though 70% of ships are in use, that 30% is still putting a heavy strain on shipping companies and their lenders - those ships still have debt on them and that debt has to be repaid.
http://shipandbunker.com/news/world/441019-dont-be-fooled-by-april-1-surge-in-baltic-dry-index-analyst-warns
That's one economic indicator. If goods aren't being bought and sold, money isn't being exchanged and that is not good for the world economy.
Closer to home, these economists are pointing at the "good" unemployment rate - the recent increase in jobs, even though the unemployment rate ticked up to 5% last week and will likely be adjusted higher in a week or ten days. That 5% is a completely pulled from thin air number, though. It's happy talk for the folks and here's why I say that.
This is a screenshot that I took from usdebtclock.org this morning:
http://usdebtclock.org/
Let's look a little closer at this, shall we?
In 2000 the median income - the average annual earnings per household across America - was $28,302. Today, April 4, 2016, the median income is $30,171 - just a little more than $14 per hour but they buying power of that $14 is much less than it was in 2000. Think back - in 2000 you could probably buy a nice lunch in most cities in America and have money left over from $10. Now I'd challenge you to find a nice lunch for less than $15 - that's inflation.
Based on the rate of inflation - generally considered to be an average of about 3% per year - median income should be $22.59 per hour now. But it's not. That screenshot is from just this morning and it's reflective of reality. So wages aren't exactly robust.
There is also the comparison between the "Official Unemployed" of 7,959,124 and the "Real Unemployed" of 15,592,681 - almost twice as many people are unemployed as the government says. Which puts the real unemployment rate closer to 10% than to the official number of 5%.
Don't take my word for this - just Google 'real unemployment rate'. Warning: look past the government sites - they have a vested interest in selling you snake oil, so look at CNBC, Bloomberg or one of the other financial sites. They're still to be taken with a grain of salt because they have a vested interest in painting a rosier picture than reality, but they're a bit more trustworthy.
In that screenshot are a few more esoteric indicators.
The number of uninsured - which indicates that there are more than forty million people who cannot afford the insurance premiums that they are required to pay under Obamacare. They're working but are caught between the rock and a hard place of their earnings and the cost of the insurance premiums. They earn too much to qualify for the government subsidy, but too little to be able to afford the premiums. People like me.
Consider your own situation because you're little different than your neighbors or friends. If you are doing better now than you were ten years ago, good for you - I'm thrilled. I'm willing to wager that you're not, though. How's your personal economy doing? How are your wages compared to ten years ago? Are you earning more now than you were ten years ago?
Those are the economic indicators that really matter. The stock market is manipulated - it's run by the investment houses and banks but it's controlled by the Federal Reserve (Central Bank that runs all of the world economies when you get down to brass tacks) and the US Treasury department. They have a little thing instituted during the early days of the 2007 / 2008 Recession.
Remember Quantitative Easing - QE and QE 1 and QE 2, etc? Well, that's part of it - it's called Permanent Open Market Operations (POMO).
To prevent the stock market from having wild swings as the markets change and people get confident or scared - pull their money or invest it - that POMO was put in place.
When the market drops significantly - more than a hundred points or so - the Treasury steps in. They infuse 'money' in the form of code (1's and 0's) to stabilize it. If it soars, they'll let it go because it looks good to the folks.
The real value of the DOW Jones, if it wasn't manipulated as it's been over the past ten years or so, would probably be in the range of 10,000 to 12,000 points. There is nothing supporting what you see when you look at the markets - there is no real intrinsic value and nothing in the fundamental net worth of those companies to support the current 17,500 level in the market.
Don't believe me? Well, first look up POMO. It's there in Google. Read about it (although I warn you: it's dry as dust and you'll probably want to throttle me for suggesting the read). Then do some research. Talk to a financial adviser you trust - one who's not selling you something because if he's your broker or if he's selling you something, he's got a vested interest in lying to you about it. After all, if you think that the DOW will head toward 30,000 wouldn't you buy?
So Donald isn't wrong. He might be premature, but he is not wrong because there is nothing supporting this economy. We're a lot like Wiley E. Coyote in the Bugs Bunny cartoons. As long as we don't look down, look for the underpinning that's holding us up, we're fine. Once we realize that we're treading on thin air... look out!
Do some reading and research. Talk to people knowledgeable about this stuff. Listen carefully to the talking heads who discuss stuff like this. The contradictions between what they say - the excuses they use - are so commonplace you'll soon realize the truth.
Best~
Philippa
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories
Sunday, April 3, 2016
The MSM is Chock-full of Mental Defectives
Can you believe this? Less than two weeks ago, ISIS blew up an airport and a subway station in Brussels. They killed more than thirty people and injured several hundred more, but the biggest issue in American politics this week is not the existential threats of terrorism, our porous border, jobs or the economy.
No. According to the so-called 'news' outlets, the only and the BIGGEST threat to our country is that Donald Trump made more than a few stupid, ill-informed statements* about abortion.
*Sorry, Donald, but I'm like you - I call 'em as I see 'em and there is no other explanation for what you said - stupid (you should never have tried to answer that question) and ill-informed (because you didn't have your facts straight until after the fact: Roe v. Wade is the law, period, end of story).
So is this election really all and only about abortion? Are we so insulated from the rest of the world that we can discuss and dissect what goes on in women's wombs to the exclusion of everything else?
Well, based on what I'm hearing and seeing from the MSM yes, it is.
After all, since this blew up last week during interviews with Anderson Cooper on CNN and Chris Matthews on MSNBC, every single one of the chattering class on television, and the nattering class in the print media, have talked about nothing else. It's as if ISIS and the rest of it doesn't exist.
However, to the intelligent people out here in the real world, this whole discussion of the past week is a pure non-issue.
Roe v. Wade was decided by SCOTUS more than forty years ago. Unless and until something brings another case in front of the court it is a waste of time, oxygen and energy to talk about it. Even if it did end up back in front of SCOTUS, it is right next door to impossible that it would be struck down or overturned.
Still, instead of spending time talking about the really important things that matter to people out here, outside of New York and Washington - like jobs, like taxes, like government regulations, like terrorists blowing innocent people to smithereens, like North Korea and its nukes, like ISIS working on developing chemical weapons in a chem lab in Iraq, like Iran and its ballistic missiles, like... That is one hell of an impressive list of substantive issues - but, instead of focusing on those things, the MSM is all caught up in women's wombs. Give me a break.
I'm sorry - but I really do not give the first little rip about what goes on with some other woman's womb. Like it or not, agree with it or not, it is none of my business and I do not want to talk about it any more.
Hello! * Knock, knock, knock * CNN, Pravda-USA, MSNBC I've got news for you guys - the issue of women's reproductive rights is dead and settled - has been for about four decades now - can we just let it go? Can't we please focus on the economy, national security, safety and the big ticket issues that really matter to the majority of adults in this country?
Can we please talk about the important grown-up stuff for a change?
I hope so.
Best~
Philippa
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories
No. According to the so-called 'news' outlets, the only and the BIGGEST threat to our country is that Donald Trump made more than a few stupid, ill-informed statements* about abortion.
*Sorry, Donald, but I'm like you - I call 'em as I see 'em and there is no other explanation for what you said - stupid (you should never have tried to answer that question) and ill-informed (because you didn't have your facts straight until after the fact: Roe v. Wade is the law, period, end of story).
So is this election really all and only about abortion? Are we so insulated from the rest of the world that we can discuss and dissect what goes on in women's wombs to the exclusion of everything else?
Well, based on what I'm hearing and seeing from the MSM yes, it is.
After all, since this blew up last week during interviews with Anderson Cooper on CNN and Chris Matthews on MSNBC, every single one of the chattering class on television, and the nattering class in the print media, have talked about nothing else. It's as if ISIS and the rest of it doesn't exist.
However, to the intelligent people out here in the real world, this whole discussion of the past week is a pure non-issue.
Roe v. Wade was decided by SCOTUS more than forty years ago. Unless and until something brings another case in front of the court it is a waste of time, oxygen and energy to talk about it. Even if it did end up back in front of SCOTUS, it is right next door to impossible that it would be struck down or overturned.
Still, instead of spending time talking about the really important things that matter to people out here, outside of New York and Washington - like jobs, like taxes, like government regulations, like terrorists blowing innocent people to smithereens, like North Korea and its nukes, like ISIS working on developing chemical weapons in a chem lab in Iraq, like Iran and its ballistic missiles, like... That is one hell of an impressive list of substantive issues - but, instead of focusing on those things, the MSM is all caught up in women's wombs. Give me a break.
I'm sorry - but I really do not give the first little rip about what goes on with some other woman's womb. Like it or not, agree with it or not, it is none of my business and I do not want to talk about it any more.
Hello! * Knock, knock, knock * CNN, Pravda-USA, MSNBC I've got news for you guys - the issue of women's reproductive rights is dead and settled - has been for about four decades now - can we just let it go? Can't we please focus on the economy, national security, safety and the big ticket issues that really matter to the majority of adults in this country?
Can we please talk about the important grown-up stuff for a change?
I hope so.
Best~
Philippa
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories
Saturday, April 2, 2016
Ya Know What, Jim? Yesterday Pissed Me Off
Jim Geraghty's dismissive post about Trump supporters being idiots and fools was snot. Pure and simple mucus that belongs wadded up in a piece of tissue at the bottom of a garbage can. And he's just the latest in a long procession of people who think and have written and said the same kinds of things.
What's infuriating is that none of these people have got the first foggiest clue about why so many people are backing Donald Trump.
Thinking about it here, on the receiving end, I got mad yesterday. Really mad because until he and his pinhead friends know what I and what people like me have lived for these past twelve years, he has no right in the world to dismiss us. Until he and the others understand how disenfranchised and disrespected millions of us feel, he would do really well to just shut the fuck up.
Sorry - I'm trying not to do that anymore because I have a bigger vocabulary than that, but that says precisely what I want to say.
Just. Shut. Up. And here's why:
I do not, I never have and I never will draw six or seven figures a year in salary. I make an honest wage, but it is a just-barely-scraping-the-sides-of-the-barrel and enough-to-barely-make-ends-meet wage. And it's not because I'm not good or smart or talented or skilled. It's because it's the best I can find in this economy.
I will never sit down in some fancy Washington or New York restaurant and scarf a portion of a $100, $200 or $1,000 dinner. Not because I don't want to, but because I can't afford it. I can't even save up for it because I don't have two pennies to scrape together at the end of a month - it all goes to pay my expenses.
I drive a twelve year old Ford station wagon with almost 150,000 on the odometer. I will make that car last just as long as I possibly can, not because I like it but because I cannot afford $200 or $300 or $500 a month in lease expenses. I can't afford to spend $8,000 or $10,000 or more on a 'new' used car, either.
I never have and I never will drive a Mercedes Benz or a BMW or anything other than a basic form of transportation. Not because I don't want to, but because I can't. I can't afford it.
I am not quite sixty years old. I have worked since I graduated from high school in 1975. Aside being mainly unemployed for sixteen months, the longest time I haven't worked was the two years I took off to stay home with my daughter, before I had to go back to work to support the family.
If I did manual labor, I'm the kind of person who would have honorable calluses on my hands. I don't have calluses, but I do get up at 4:45 every morning and leave my house by 7:00 every morning and don't get home until 6:30 every night. I have taken one day off in the past year - for the birth of my grandson.
I am, and others like me are, the backbone of this country and its economy. Unlike the pointy airhead pundits who make a living writing drivel about what goes on inside Washington.
I, and others like me, work to help produce goods and services that have meaning.
At the end of the day - who cares about opinion? What does that do for anyone? I can't eat it or drive it or wear it - so why should people who produce nothing but hot air on a computer screen think they can disrespect me and others like me who actually produce things that have real meaning?
And we are the majority who are supporting Trump.
So now, Jim, given those things, given our honest labor that pays an honest day's wages, who the hell are you to call me and others like me idiots and fools?
And I'll take it further - you don't get it, okay. Here is why I'm supporting Trump:
In the late 1990's and through 2001, our family was solid middle class. We had a mortgage on a nice house in a nice neighborhood and were doing okay financially. I had a job that paid enough that my husband could stay home and day-trade, taking care of our daughter.
We decided to sell the house we were living in - it was really too big for a family of three, so we bought another house. We used the equity we had built up over the years and bought a slightly more expensive home - not bigger, not better, just more money because prices had gone up. The mortgage on our new house was manageable.
We were just like millions of other middle class Americans. Things were fine through 2005. By then, I had been at my job for ten years. I was earning enough that I could support my husband and our daughter. We could even save a little every month.
Then, in 2006, we started seeing signs the economy was changing. The day-trading had already gone by the wayside - I was the sole support of our family and I was getting nervous.
The company I had been with had its first layoffs in its fifty year history. In the course of twenty minutes, six people were gone. The survivors, me included, took pay cuts or cuts in our hours to keep things going. Gradually it got better and then 2007 hit.
The housing bubble burst and the economy collapsed in on itself.
The millions of bad loans that Congress, George Bush and Hank Paulson, driven by the Federal Reserve and the banking industry had palmed off on people who never should have qualified for loans came home to roost. No one was repaying the balloons on the loans they had taken out in 2000, 2001, 2002 and 2003 after the banking laws were repealed by Congress. Together these characters, along with Newt Gingrich and Billy-Jeff and others in Washington had destroyed the fiduciary responsibility of the banks to protect their depositors' money.
The Washington insiders, the Federal Reserve and Wall Street had colluded together to create a devastating housing bubble. Those people who should never, ever, ever have received loans had received loans - often for the full value of the property they were buying. No job? No problem! Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were there to provide the money needed - just ignore the fact that those institutions were, at the bottom line, publicly funded by other homeowners and workers like me.
In 2007 we elected a first term Senator from Illinois. This man had never run a company. He had never managed a company. He had never, to the best of anyone's knowledge, ever balanced a checkbook - but he was elected to the office of the President.
Immediately, he started blaming Bush for everything that was wrong - and that has not changed eight years later. He did nothing, materially, to change things, to make them better. He didn't consult with business people to figure out what they needed to make their companies stronger and more vibrant. He didn't do his job and work with Congress to re-institute Glass-Steagall and put in place laws that would hold the banks and investment companies accountable.
No! He bailed them out. He took whatever was left of our hard-earned money and handed it over to the too-big-to-fails that had created this mess - paying no attention whatsoever to the devastation that was taking place in the real world outside of Washington and New York. Oh, sure, he gave it lip service - but lip service doesn't keep a roof over a families head. It doesn't put clothes on their back, shoes on their feet and food on their table.
The economy continued to fall apart through 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 - more layoffs, unemployment soared, companies by the hundreds of thousands down-sized or just closed their doors. There were no new jobs for the people unemployed by the malfeasance of George Bush, Hank Paulson, Congress and the continuation of bad policy by the new administration.
But who cares! Let's get Obamacare going - never mind that it will destroy whatever small companies might be left in America. Who cares about the employers of millions of people or the millions of people who will lose their jobs because of the onerous requirements? I don't because it's my legacy!
Never mind that start to finish the vast majority of the American people screamed that we didn't want it - but it was shoved down our throats anyway - to the detriment of families and businesses and the medical care providers.
The company I worked for had more wage freezes and layoffs - 2008, 2010 and 2012. In the last, I was caught up. Eight people - almost the last of the non-partners / owners - were included in that layoff. I had been there for seventeen years. Some had been there more than twenty and twenty-five years. They had been looking forward to retiring in a few years and... wham! Unemployment, the potential of losing their homes, evisceration of their 401ks.
In eight years since that first term Senator took office, this economy hasn't even begun to recover. Regardless of what anyone inside Washington and the nattering class says - this economy has not recovered.
Unemployment, if you dig through the piles of manure the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and the government cover it with every month, is horrible.
Do you realize that under current employment counting rules if a professional who is on unemployment works just one hour - just sixty minutes - in a week and is paid just $20 - the BLS counts him or her as employed for that week?
If someone works as a temporary employee - at one-half or one-quarter of their former wage - for just an hour in a week, they are counted as 'employed'.
How does that work? Come on! That's not a sustainable wage. That won't buy lunch in a lot of places in this country, so how can those people be called 'employed'? Yet they are.
For me, after losing my job in 2012, it took me more than two months to find even a $14 hour temporary job - less than half of what I had been earning, with no benefits - for two days.
And that wasn't because I wasn't trying. The day after I was told I no longer had a job, I put together my resume. I called the employment agencies - seven of them - and made appointments. That week after losing my job, I was in front of agency people, selling them on my skills, yet it took two months for me to find even a $14 per hour job.
I did well there. I did well enough there that that company specifically asked for me when they needed coverage the next several times. I had the same thing happen with other employers so by November, I was working fairly regularly.
Then I got lucky - so I thought. I got an offer - but they were going through an internal restructuring so it would 'be a few weeks' but I shouldn't accept any temp work because 'they might need' me right away. Eight weeks went by with me supporting my family on $11.50 per hour unemployment while waiting for this job that paid almost what I had been making at my last job. To me, given the economy, it was a good wait.
Finally, in January 2013 I started work and I worked until... sequestration. March 2013 began the government intervention that cost millions of government and government contractors their jobs - me included.
May 1st saw me back on unemployment, back to knocking on doors, calling the temporary agencies two and three times a week, spending hours every week cruising Monster and Craig's List and Indeed and company websites searching for anything that would pay even a little more than the unemployment benefits I was receiving.
In the meantime, the siding on our house began to rot - we couldn't afford to paint or fix it. Our bedroom window broke - we can't afford to replace it. The roof is on its last legs - not quite leaking but it will be in a year or two or three.
In October 2014 I became a criminal thanks to my federal government. Obamacare kicked in but I make too much to qualify for subsidies and too little to afford almost $900 per month in premiums plus the $6,000 deductible for my husband and me. This year, in my taxes, I "get" to pay a penalty for being uninsured.
For nearly three years I lay awake at night, worrying - how am I going to pay the bills? Will I be able to keep this job or will I be let go? Will I ever find another job? How are we going to make it?
Now I have a job - it's a regular job but I am making thirty percent less than I made just four years ago. I still cannot afford those insurance premiums. I am still a criminal. I cannot afford to save. I cannot afford even basic repairs to my house. The value on the biggest asset that I own that is finally starting to look like it might go back to where we bought it twelve years ago but at this point, the only way I might realize that potential is if I throw about $60,000 that I no longer can afford into it for the repairs that have gone wanting for so long - $30,000 for new siding, $20,000 for a new roof, new paint and new carpet.
In the years since I lost my job in 2012 we have gone, as so many others have gone in this past decade, from comfortable middle class to barely making it. Even now, because I don't earn enough to be comfortable, we unplug appliances when we're not using them. We have taken light bulbs out of fixtures to save money. We don't run the heat until the house gets below sixty degrees. We don't run the air conditioner unless it's over 100 degrees outside. We don't drive unless we absolutely have to, because we can't afford it, even though gas is now at a reasonable price.
Before this mess began in 2006 / 2007, we could go out to dinner occasionally. Nothing big, nothing expensive, but we could. Now we can't. I honestly cannot remember the last time we ate out - and that last time was Jack In The Box. Not because we wanted to, but because it was all we could afford.
So before these erudite airheads tell me that I'm an "idiot" for voting for someone outside the norm, they should sit down and talk to people like me. They should walk the walk of a life like mine before opining on how "wrong" I am.
I am voting for Donald Trump because the same-old, same-old of Washington politicians and a one term Senator have not been good for me, for people like me, or for this country. I am desperate to try something - anything new and another one term Senator is not an option.
So take my advice, Jim - and pass the word to your buds: just shut up until you know what you're talking about.
Best~
Philippa
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories
What's infuriating is that none of these people have got the first foggiest clue about why so many people are backing Donald Trump.
Thinking about it here, on the receiving end, I got mad yesterday. Really mad because until he and his pinhead friends know what I and what people like me have lived for these past twelve years, he has no right in the world to dismiss us. Until he and the others understand how disenfranchised and disrespected millions of us feel, he would do really well to just shut the fuck up.
Sorry - I'm trying not to do that anymore because I have a bigger vocabulary than that, but that says precisely what I want to say.
Just. Shut. Up. And here's why:
I do not, I never have and I never will draw six or seven figures a year in salary. I make an honest wage, but it is a just-barely-scraping-the-sides-of-the-barrel and enough-to-barely-make-ends-meet wage. And it's not because I'm not good or smart or talented or skilled. It's because it's the best I can find in this economy.
I will never sit down in some fancy Washington or New York restaurant and scarf a portion of a $100, $200 or $1,000 dinner. Not because I don't want to, but because I can't afford it. I can't even save up for it because I don't have two pennies to scrape together at the end of a month - it all goes to pay my expenses.
I drive a twelve year old Ford station wagon with almost 150,000 on the odometer. I will make that car last just as long as I possibly can, not because I like it but because I cannot afford $200 or $300 or $500 a month in lease expenses. I can't afford to spend $8,000 or $10,000 or more on a 'new' used car, either.
I never have and I never will drive a Mercedes Benz or a BMW or anything other than a basic form of transportation. Not because I don't want to, but because I can't. I can't afford it.
I am not quite sixty years old. I have worked since I graduated from high school in 1975. Aside being mainly unemployed for sixteen months, the longest time I haven't worked was the two years I took off to stay home with my daughter, before I had to go back to work to support the family.
If I did manual labor, I'm the kind of person who would have honorable calluses on my hands. I don't have calluses, but I do get up at 4:45 every morning and leave my house by 7:00 every morning and don't get home until 6:30 every night. I have taken one day off in the past year - for the birth of my grandson.
I am, and others like me are, the backbone of this country and its economy. Unlike the pointy airhead pundits who make a living writing drivel about what goes on inside Washington.
I, and others like me, work to help produce goods and services that have meaning.
At the end of the day - who cares about opinion? What does that do for anyone? I can't eat it or drive it or wear it - so why should people who produce nothing but hot air on a computer screen think they can disrespect me and others like me who actually produce things that have real meaning?
And we are the majority who are supporting Trump.
So now, Jim, given those things, given our honest labor that pays an honest day's wages, who the hell are you to call me and others like me idiots and fools?
And I'll take it further - you don't get it, okay. Here is why I'm supporting Trump:
In the late 1990's and through 2001, our family was solid middle class. We had a mortgage on a nice house in a nice neighborhood and were doing okay financially. I had a job that paid enough that my husband could stay home and day-trade, taking care of our daughter.
We decided to sell the house we were living in - it was really too big for a family of three, so we bought another house. We used the equity we had built up over the years and bought a slightly more expensive home - not bigger, not better, just more money because prices had gone up. The mortgage on our new house was manageable.
We were just like millions of other middle class Americans. Things were fine through 2005. By then, I had been at my job for ten years. I was earning enough that I could support my husband and our daughter. We could even save a little every month.
Then, in 2006, we started seeing signs the economy was changing. The day-trading had already gone by the wayside - I was the sole support of our family and I was getting nervous.
The company I had been with had its first layoffs in its fifty year history. In the course of twenty minutes, six people were gone. The survivors, me included, took pay cuts or cuts in our hours to keep things going. Gradually it got better and then 2007 hit.
The housing bubble burst and the economy collapsed in on itself.
The millions of bad loans that Congress, George Bush and Hank Paulson, driven by the Federal Reserve and the banking industry had palmed off on people who never should have qualified for loans came home to roost. No one was repaying the balloons on the loans they had taken out in 2000, 2001, 2002 and 2003 after the banking laws were repealed by Congress. Together these characters, along with Newt Gingrich and Billy-Jeff and others in Washington had destroyed the fiduciary responsibility of the banks to protect their depositors' money.
The Washington insiders, the Federal Reserve and Wall Street had colluded together to create a devastating housing bubble. Those people who should never, ever, ever have received loans had received loans - often for the full value of the property they were buying. No job? No problem! Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were there to provide the money needed - just ignore the fact that those institutions were, at the bottom line, publicly funded by other homeowners and workers like me.
In 2007 we elected a first term Senator from Illinois. This man had never run a company. He had never managed a company. He had never, to the best of anyone's knowledge, ever balanced a checkbook - but he was elected to the office of the President.
Immediately, he started blaming Bush for everything that was wrong - and that has not changed eight years later. He did nothing, materially, to change things, to make them better. He didn't consult with business people to figure out what they needed to make their companies stronger and more vibrant. He didn't do his job and work with Congress to re-institute Glass-Steagall and put in place laws that would hold the banks and investment companies accountable.
No! He bailed them out. He took whatever was left of our hard-earned money and handed it over to the too-big-to-fails that had created this mess - paying no attention whatsoever to the devastation that was taking place in the real world outside of Washington and New York. Oh, sure, he gave it lip service - but lip service doesn't keep a roof over a families head. It doesn't put clothes on their back, shoes on their feet and food on their table.
The economy continued to fall apart through 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 - more layoffs, unemployment soared, companies by the hundreds of thousands down-sized or just closed their doors. There were no new jobs for the people unemployed by the malfeasance of George Bush, Hank Paulson, Congress and the continuation of bad policy by the new administration.
But who cares! Let's get Obamacare going - never mind that it will destroy whatever small companies might be left in America. Who cares about the employers of millions of people or the millions of people who will lose their jobs because of the onerous requirements? I don't because it's my legacy!
Never mind that start to finish the vast majority of the American people screamed that we didn't want it - but it was shoved down our throats anyway - to the detriment of families and businesses and the medical care providers.
The company I worked for had more wage freezes and layoffs - 2008, 2010 and 2012. In the last, I was caught up. Eight people - almost the last of the non-partners / owners - were included in that layoff. I had been there for seventeen years. Some had been there more than twenty and twenty-five years. They had been looking forward to retiring in a few years and... wham! Unemployment, the potential of losing their homes, evisceration of their 401ks.
In eight years since that first term Senator took office, this economy hasn't even begun to recover. Regardless of what anyone inside Washington and the nattering class says - this economy has not recovered.
Unemployment, if you dig through the piles of manure the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and the government cover it with every month, is horrible.
Do you realize that under current employment counting rules if a professional who is on unemployment works just one hour - just sixty minutes - in a week and is paid just $20 - the BLS counts him or her as employed for that week?
If someone works as a temporary employee - at one-half or one-quarter of their former wage - for just an hour in a week, they are counted as 'employed'.
How does that work? Come on! That's not a sustainable wage. That won't buy lunch in a lot of places in this country, so how can those people be called 'employed'? Yet they are.
For me, after losing my job in 2012, it took me more than two months to find even a $14 hour temporary job - less than half of what I had been earning, with no benefits - for two days.
And that wasn't because I wasn't trying. The day after I was told I no longer had a job, I put together my resume. I called the employment agencies - seven of them - and made appointments. That week after losing my job, I was in front of agency people, selling them on my skills, yet it took two months for me to find even a $14 per hour job.
I did well there. I did well enough there that that company specifically asked for me when they needed coverage the next several times. I had the same thing happen with other employers so by November, I was working fairly regularly.
Then I got lucky - so I thought. I got an offer - but they were going through an internal restructuring so it would 'be a few weeks' but I shouldn't accept any temp work because 'they might need' me right away. Eight weeks went by with me supporting my family on $11.50 per hour unemployment while waiting for this job that paid almost what I had been making at my last job. To me, given the economy, it was a good wait.
Finally, in January 2013 I started work and I worked until... sequestration. March 2013 began the government intervention that cost millions of government and government contractors their jobs - me included.
May 1st saw me back on unemployment, back to knocking on doors, calling the temporary agencies two and three times a week, spending hours every week cruising Monster and Craig's List and Indeed and company websites searching for anything that would pay even a little more than the unemployment benefits I was receiving.
In the meantime, the siding on our house began to rot - we couldn't afford to paint or fix it. Our bedroom window broke - we can't afford to replace it. The roof is on its last legs - not quite leaking but it will be in a year or two or three.
In October 2014 I became a criminal thanks to my federal government. Obamacare kicked in but I make too much to qualify for subsidies and too little to afford almost $900 per month in premiums plus the $6,000 deductible for my husband and me. This year, in my taxes, I "get" to pay a penalty for being uninsured.
For nearly three years I lay awake at night, worrying - how am I going to pay the bills? Will I be able to keep this job or will I be let go? Will I ever find another job? How are we going to make it?
Now I have a job - it's a regular job but I am making thirty percent less than I made just four years ago. I still cannot afford those insurance premiums. I am still a criminal. I cannot afford to save. I cannot afford even basic repairs to my house. The value on the biggest asset that I own that is finally starting to look like it might go back to where we bought it twelve years ago but at this point, the only way I might realize that potential is if I throw about $60,000 that I no longer can afford into it for the repairs that have gone wanting for so long - $30,000 for new siding, $20,000 for a new roof, new paint and new carpet.
In the years since I lost my job in 2012 we have gone, as so many others have gone in this past decade, from comfortable middle class to barely making it. Even now, because I don't earn enough to be comfortable, we unplug appliances when we're not using them. We have taken light bulbs out of fixtures to save money. We don't run the heat until the house gets below sixty degrees. We don't run the air conditioner unless it's over 100 degrees outside. We don't drive unless we absolutely have to, because we can't afford it, even though gas is now at a reasonable price.
Before this mess began in 2006 / 2007, we could go out to dinner occasionally. Nothing big, nothing expensive, but we could. Now we can't. I honestly cannot remember the last time we ate out - and that last time was Jack In The Box. Not because we wanted to, but because it was all we could afford.
So before these erudite airheads tell me that I'm an "idiot" for voting for someone outside the norm, they should sit down and talk to people like me. They should walk the walk of a life like mine before opining on how "wrong" I am.
I am voting for Donald Trump because the same-old, same-old of Washington politicians and a one term Senator have not been good for me, for people like me, or for this country. I am desperate to try something - anything new and another one term Senator is not an option.
So take my advice, Jim - and pass the word to your buds: just shut up until you know what you're talking about.
Best~
Philippa
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