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

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

Better Late Than Never for Jumping on the Trump Train

I was poking around on the interweb this morning and stumbled across an interesting opinion piece by Steve Moore - mostly of the Heritage Foundation, sometimes found on Fox. In brief he said: 'Republicans - Stop Hating Trump Supporters'

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/03/09/hey-republicans-stop-hating-on-trump-voters.html

Well it's about time, Steve! I won't welcome you into the party because you sound like you're refusing to cross the doorstep, but at least you showed up. If you do choose to sidle into the room, I won't tell on you.

Your post was good - and in clear terms sets on its ear the 'inclusive' GOP / Republican party brand the leaders of it have been trying to sell for the past couple of decades. It's obvious that these people, the Elites, Establishment and Donor Class, who are sneering down their noses at us out here in the hinterlands think we're rubes or idiots or worse. They're spending a lot of their time and a lot of their money vilifying We The People, making it as plain as the nose on your face that the Republican's 'big tent' is another Inside the Beltway Lie.

I'm pleased, though, that you're honest enough to admit that America, outside of Washington, is sick, tired, fed up with and disgusted by business as usual inside Washington.

Business as usual has included Republicans siding with Democrats on raising our taxes. Never mind that many of us have been out of work for a year or two or three, or that we've had to take substantial pay cuts in order to just find a job. And, if we were lucky, because of the mandates included in Obamacare, we could actually find a forty-hour per week job instead of settling for both that pay-cut and taking a thirty-hour job. Which is, effectively, another pay-cut.

Because of the Republicans and Democrats siding together with Obie-One against the American people, many of us have had to accept that thirty-hour work week with its associated pay cut and find another part-time job to make up the difference so we could try to maintain our lifestyle.

Yeah, that's right. We The People had too much time on our hands. Much better for us to work ourselves to death so Washington could tax us to death.

In olden days - before 2008 - there used to be a Middle Class. We used to be financially comfortable. We could take care of our kids ourselves, without government assistance or interference. We could take a vacation once every year or two, and maybe send our kids to college. We could even save some money for retirement.

Not any more. The Middle Class is gone. It no longer exists because so many who used to be Middle Class have hit poverty and have sunk through that line. It makes me wonder - was that The Plan all along? Devolve the Middle Class to serfdom? If it was, it sure as hell has worked in stellar fashion.

Thanks to the Republican party in the form of Bush II and Hank Paulson, our economy and our job market fell into the toilet in 2007 and 2008 and was flushed in 2009 by Ben Bernanke and Obie-One and Congress. And despite all the happy-talk from the pundits, we all know it hasn't recovered. It hasn't even come close to recovering for the majority of us.

Many people who used to be Middle Class are now dependent on government. Whether it's unemployment benefits or Welfare, there's little difference. Other people are supporting those who government mandates made unemployed.

Obie-One, while he was running for office, promised Hope and Change, jobs and a return to prosperity.

Well, Hope has been gone for about ten years now because the politicians have continually lied to us and, when they stopped lying long enough to draw breath, they raised taxes.

Change has happened because the economy is in the pit and people have lost their jobs, their businesses and their homes.

The jobs we got were largely low-paying part-time food service jobs.

Prosperity is gone from sight.

It's been ten long years since the first canary snuffed it - when the economy turned over and began its terminal descent. Now, ten years later, many highly educated, highly qualified people still can't find work in their field. Kids graduating from college can't find work in the fields for which they studied.

My niece and nephew - both college graduates - work at Costco. They're not working in the fields for which they studied and trained, for which they took out college loans, built up debt and went to university for four years. They're working in the service sector instead of the professional sector. Does anyone else see anything wrong with this picture? And they aren't unusual. They're actually pretty representative of people in their age bracket.

Because Obie-One and the Democrats, colluding with the Republicans in Congress, made it harder and harder for companies to operate here and compete over there, across the water, companies left. Jobs that paid good wages went with them, and unemployment increased.

Ford is leaving. Nabisco is leaving. Carrier is leaving. Pfizer is leaving. And those are just a few.

Sequestration? I and a bunch of other people lost jobs at a company for which I worked. It was a small division of a major company, but when thirty people, about fifteen percent of the workforce in that division were laid off because of government interference, it doesn't bode well for people's feeling about government.

There is a whole long list of major companies, big employers that used to offer good jobs with good wages and benefits, that have moved off-shore available from various places on the internet.

Domestically, big companies are still laying off thousands of workers. In January alone, more than 75,000 people lost their jobs. Granted, about a third of those were seasonal workers hired for the Christmas season. Still, two-thirds, more than 50,000, were Wal-Mart and Macy's employees who were laid off because of store closings. Not just reduction in force, but closures of existing stores because they're no longer profitable. The oil industry is laying off thousands - 258,000 in 2015 alone, and more are to come in 2016 based on industry projections.

So, yes, Steve. We are pissed off. We have heard politicians make promise after promise after promise after promise. All the while we have been hoping that just once they weren't lying through their teeth and time after time we have realized that their words were empty. The people who paid for the politician's campaign pulled the strings and we got screwed again.

It's good to know that at least one talking head inside The Beltway is getting that first whiff of Folgers. I just hope others will wake up, too, recognize how furious and frustrated the American people have become over the past decade. I hope they'll stop trashing us because I, for one, resent it.

We will put up with a lot, but not with this. Which is why we're out in force voting for Donald Trump. Better a peaceful revolution for all, rather than an explosion of anger that could lead to ugliness and all sorts of bad things, so stop poking the beehive.

Yes, we're pissed off because the lifestyle that we used to take for granted is gone. No more vacations. No more going out to eat - even for special occasions. And, yippity-skippitee! The Republicans voted with the Democrats to raise our taxes! Thanks, guys. Just what we need when we're down.

And I'm still supporting and voting for Donald Trump - and what's here is just the tip of the iceberg against which the Titanic of the United States of America has foundered.

Have a marvelous day.

Best~
Philippa

Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories