Amazon is supposed to be a public use site for purchasing and reviewing products. However, only if you are of a particular political bent. Straight Left. Like a one-way sign.
So, since I don't qualify as a bent left liberal, and since I do have opinions, here is my review of Mrs. Clinton's tome (aka door stop / table support) "What Happened".
Aside from the obvious answer - You Lost - the only thing this particular Whine needs is a lot more cheese. It's like a fortified Port. An overwhelming tsunami of self-pity and blame for everyone but herself.
One thing my parents taught me, a very good lesson that's served me well in my sixty years upon planet Earth is: don't blame others for your own screw-ups.
If you fail, if you screw up, it's on YOU. It's no one else's fault. It's yours, so own it. Then you'll (hopefully) learn from it.
Yet, in all those pages of black overlaid on white, that is what Hillary does not do.
She does not step up, lift her chin in defiant acknowledgement that would result in at least some modicum of respect from others and say, "yes, I messed up. I'm sorry, but I did, and here's what I would do differently."
Oh, no! No, no no no no!!! Instead, she blames EVERYONE, and I do mean EVERYONE, but herself.
She blames me - a white suburban housewife.
She blames my husband.
She blames millions like me, and like my husband.
She blames the press, the churches, the... well, everyone, everything, and anything she can think of. Everything and everyone but herself.
The one person she doesn't blame in this entire thing is herself. Even the Macedonians - and who in modern history (sorry, guys, but you're not exactly frontline news in every day America) even THINKS about Macedonians these days? I don't. Except for the Bible and Biblical reference, I don't think about Macedonians - and yet Hillary blames them for a part of her losing an election. Really?
She doesn't even blink at the idea that maybe her messaging was non-existent. What was her message, anyway? It's less than a year out from the election that she claims should have been hers, and can anyone say what that message was? Come on - I dare you! Tell me what her message was - aside from "It's my turn."
Where was she in all those states that she lost? Wisconsin, Minnesota, Florida and the rest - where was she?
California was a foregone conclusion. She spent weeks in Hollywood, sucking up to the most liberal of liberals, but only because they could give her money. That's the only reason she showed up here.
Hell! California lets illegal immigrants vote through motor-voter registrations, and no doubt they did in droves because they were certain-damned-guaranteed that if Hillary won they'd get amnesty. Take that vote away and Trump would've won the popular vote along with the electoral college.
The painful truth for Hillary is: She is an ugly, small, unimaginative and crass human being married to a serial rapist named Bill.
Her biggest problem, aside from being an ugly human being who blames everyone but herself for her failings, a small human being who blames everyone but herself for everything bad in her life, and her crassness in expecting hard-working people to pay for everything for everyone who doesn't want to lift a finger to contribute are things that normal, hard-working, get up at five to get to work by eight to work until five, decent Americans don't like that.
So, what happened in November? America woke up. America heard a new message. America heard something different, a hope that maybe things didn't have to be as they were. Miracles don't happen every day. Sometimes people intervene - like Hillary being small and ugly and crass and lazy.
As an American. As a voter. As someone who loves the prospect of what this country can be, all I can say is Thank God For That. Thank God for sense and wisdom and exhaustion of the people for same old, same old. Thank God for Donald J. Trump and for his vision for what American can be. I just hope he succeeds.
Best ~
Philippa
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 13, 2017
Monday, March 28, 2016
I Don't Like Liars & Ted Cruz Qualifies
Good grief! What a weekend... Accusations about things I would rather not imagine - and some of it looks more than a bit suspicious, like it might actually stick.
Back on April 1st last year, one of the women who has been identified on the internet as one of Cruz's Babes appeared in a Tweeted selfie while showing off a Winston Churchill tattoo placed on the back of her left shoulder. That is not an easy place to self-apply a tattoo and she just happens to be wearing what looks like it might be a man's suit jacket (it's hard to tell - but...)
It's all over the place on the 'net that at the same time on the same day she took that pic, Ted Cruz was appearing on Fox's morning show. There he showed off a Winston Churchill tattoo on his right forearm while batting away a question about where his jacket might be.
This is a seven minute segment, but if you fast forward to about 6:30 you'll get to the part that's most interesting and potentially relevant - the display of the tattoo and question / deflection about the whereabouts of the jacket.
When asked where he got the tat, he said he was on the West Coast - so it would be interesting if someone were to follow that lead. Was Ms. Carpenter also on the West Coast at the time?
These tit bits were put together by several sites across several blogs, but the pictures and video are available off the internet if you just do a search.
There are other little things, too. Like the $500,000 contribution made from the Cruz campaign to Carly Fiorina's PAC - and the fact that another of the Cruz Babes happened to work for Fiorina. The Election Commission is looking into that peculiarity but I wonder if it's hush money for something.
It doesn't matter whether it is or not - that transaction stinks to high Heaven. After all, why would one presidential campaign transfer a cool half-mil to another, competing campaign? I can't think of a logical answer. Wouldn't the Cruz campaign be able to make better hay with that money than hand it off to Carly's account?
Further to this whole thing, several places including Lawnewz.com, have posted articles that raise a really interesting point.
While Ted Cruz has attacked the National Enquirer article that started the rumpus on Friday, he has not denied doing anything wrong.
He's called the article 'garbage' and accused Trump of planting it (which Trump didn't as more than one person has traced it back to the Rubio campaign), but he hasn't declared in no uncertain terms 'I did not boff that woman, or that one, or that one, or...'
It's an interesting point because when we're accused of doing something we didn't - particularly if it's unsavory or embarrassing - don't you or I immediately stand up and say, 'it wasn't me! I didn't do that!'? That reaction is missing between here and last Friday from Mr. Cruz.
There's also the question about the lawsuit. If the article put out by the National Enquirer has no basis in fact, it's defamatory and this is a case where great harm can be easily shown. Just the embarrassment of such allegations against such a pillar of moral society would be enough. Or the emotional harm caused to his wife and children. Those criteria have been met. So why is Cruz not threatening a suit against a defamatory publication? Could it be that he knows there is something there - perhaps not five but maybe four or three?
If he were to take this to court, and if there is evidence that he was doing these women on the side, he'd look like an idiot. Could it be that he doesn't want to look like more of an immoral snake-in-the-grass than he does already?
I will say I don't feel sorry for Heidi Cruz. I've done some digging into her background and she is just as unsavory as her husband. Besides, she's probably known he was getting some on the side for a while. After all, for more than a year he was working on his political career in Texas while she was working with the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington.
No - I feel sorry for the kids. No children should ever have to be faced with stuff like this and hearing these horrible things about a man you look up to and respect? It's a terrible thing for them. Just on that score Ted Cruz should hang his head in shame.
Another piece of moral character that is missing from Mr. Cruz's make-up is the apology to Mrs. Trump and her husband about his PAC going after Mrs. Trump with those billboards.
Art is in the eye of the beholder and those billboards could qualify as art - she made a gorgeous model. Since that picture was shot for a British gentleman's magazine - not quite Playboy - I don't think she's terribly embarrassed by it. Except for how that picture has damaged her husband's campaign in Utah - but it probably wouldn't have mattered anyway. Not with Romney out there stumping for Cruz.
Hmm. I wonder what Romney will think, say or do if these allegations about his new political bestest bud are proven true? Wave it off and give it a pass? Wonder if the moral compass needle in Salt Lake is broken, too.
Art and political bed mates aside, when a political candidate benefits from the actions of a PAC, and that PAC is responsible for doing something reprehensible - like targeting the opposing candidate's wife or children - doesn't that candidate bear a responsibility or obligation to stand up and denounce the PAC? Morally and ethically I think they do. After all, if they're benefiting in some way, they do bear some responsibility for what provides that benefit whether or not they are directly involved in the decision to run with it.
No matter. It's water under the bridge - except for those bobbing beauties still to be identified and named who are caught in the current.
As for the other lying - not related to the babes - it's documented.
PolitiFact has a list readily available.
The little fact that his wife, Heidi, worked for at least five years at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is another.
That association puts a hard and fast exclamation point on the #LyinTed tag. After all, the CFR has quite questionable goals - small, non-intrusive government emphatically not being one of them. You can read all about them and draw your own conclusions, but if Ted's goals are small government and strict adherence to the Constitution, wouldn't he kind of object to his wife being associated with an organization diametrically opposed to Constitutional sovereignty?
In any event, I'm going to sit back and wait for the next shoe to drop from this distasteful (but interesting) millipede. It shouldn't be long...
Have a wonderful day.
Best~
Philippa
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories
Back on April 1st last year, one of the women who has been identified on the internet as one of Cruz's Babes appeared in a Tweeted selfie while showing off a Winston Churchill tattoo placed on the back of her left shoulder. That is not an easy place to self-apply a tattoo and she just happens to be wearing what looks like it might be a man's suit jacket (it's hard to tell - but...)
It's all over the place on the 'net that at the same time on the same day she took that pic, Ted Cruz was appearing on Fox's morning show. There he showed off a Winston Churchill tattoo on his right forearm while batting away a question about where his jacket might be.
This is a seven minute segment, but if you fast forward to about 6:30 you'll get to the part that's most interesting and potentially relevant - the display of the tattoo and question / deflection about the whereabouts of the jacket.
When asked where he got the tat, he said he was on the West Coast - so it would be interesting if someone were to follow that lead. Was Ms. Carpenter also on the West Coast at the time?
These tit bits were put together by several sites across several blogs, but the pictures and video are available off the internet if you just do a search.
There are other little things, too. Like the $500,000 contribution made from the Cruz campaign to Carly Fiorina's PAC - and the fact that another of the Cruz Babes happened to work for Fiorina. The Election Commission is looking into that peculiarity but I wonder if it's hush money for something.
It doesn't matter whether it is or not - that transaction stinks to high Heaven. After all, why would one presidential campaign transfer a cool half-mil to another, competing campaign? I can't think of a logical answer. Wouldn't the Cruz campaign be able to make better hay with that money than hand it off to Carly's account?
Further to this whole thing, several places including Lawnewz.com, have posted articles that raise a really interesting point.
While Ted Cruz has attacked the National Enquirer article that started the rumpus on Friday, he has not denied doing anything wrong.
He's called the article 'garbage' and accused Trump of planting it (which Trump didn't as more than one person has traced it back to the Rubio campaign), but he hasn't declared in no uncertain terms 'I did not boff that woman, or that one, or that one, or...'
It's an interesting point because when we're accused of doing something we didn't - particularly if it's unsavory or embarrassing - don't you or I immediately stand up and say, 'it wasn't me! I didn't do that!'? That reaction is missing between here and last Friday from Mr. Cruz.
There's also the question about the lawsuit. If the article put out by the National Enquirer has no basis in fact, it's defamatory and this is a case where great harm can be easily shown. Just the embarrassment of such allegations against such a pillar of moral society would be enough. Or the emotional harm caused to his wife and children. Those criteria have been met. So why is Cruz not threatening a suit against a defamatory publication? Could it be that he knows there is something there - perhaps not five but maybe four or three?
If he were to take this to court, and if there is evidence that he was doing these women on the side, he'd look like an idiot. Could it be that he doesn't want to look like more of an immoral snake-in-the-grass than he does already?
I will say I don't feel sorry for Heidi Cruz. I've done some digging into her background and she is just as unsavory as her husband. Besides, she's probably known he was getting some on the side for a while. After all, for more than a year he was working on his political career in Texas while she was working with the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington.
No - I feel sorry for the kids. No children should ever have to be faced with stuff like this and hearing these horrible things about a man you look up to and respect? It's a terrible thing for them. Just on that score Ted Cruz should hang his head in shame.
Another piece of moral character that is missing from Mr. Cruz's make-up is the apology to Mrs. Trump and her husband about his PAC going after Mrs. Trump with those billboards.
Art is in the eye of the beholder and those billboards could qualify as art - she made a gorgeous model. Since that picture was shot for a British gentleman's magazine - not quite Playboy - I don't think she's terribly embarrassed by it. Except for how that picture has damaged her husband's campaign in Utah - but it probably wouldn't have mattered anyway. Not with Romney out there stumping for Cruz.
Hmm. I wonder what Romney will think, say or do if these allegations about his new political bestest bud are proven true? Wave it off and give it a pass? Wonder if the moral compass needle in Salt Lake is broken, too.
Art and political bed mates aside, when a political candidate benefits from the actions of a PAC, and that PAC is responsible for doing something reprehensible - like targeting the opposing candidate's wife or children - doesn't that candidate bear a responsibility or obligation to stand up and denounce the PAC? Morally and ethically I think they do. After all, if they're benefiting in some way, they do bear some responsibility for what provides that benefit whether or not they are directly involved in the decision to run with it.
No matter. It's water under the bridge - except for those bobbing beauties still to be identified and named who are caught in the current.
As for the other lying - not related to the babes - it's documented.
PolitiFact has a list readily available.
The little fact that his wife, Heidi, worked for at least five years at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is another.
That association puts a hard and fast exclamation point on the #LyinTed tag. After all, the CFR has quite questionable goals - small, non-intrusive government emphatically not being one of them. You can read all about them and draw your own conclusions, but if Ted's goals are small government and strict adherence to the Constitution, wouldn't he kind of object to his wife being associated with an organization diametrically opposed to Constitutional sovereignty?
In any event, I'm going to sit back and wait for the next shoe to drop from this distasteful (but interesting) millipede. It shouldn't be long...
Have a wonderful day.
Best~
Philippa
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories
Thursday, March 10, 2016
Karl Marx, Bill Kristol and the National Review
Yep - that's right. Not a connection I ever expected to make, truth to tell, but thanks to Bill Kristol, Editor of the National Review, I now can.
It seems that Donald has hit another big nerve.
First it was Mexico with the wall. Last week Vicente Fox, in a highly presidential moment, dropped the F-bomb on national television, startling the crap out of Maria Bartaromo on Fox Business when he did it live.
Now it's Bill Kristol and the Elites who just held their annual American Enterprise Institute meeting. This is yet another private affair, more secretive than the annual Bilderberg meetings, held on a private island off the coast of Georgia (USA, although it might as well be the Soviet Union).
What's semi-amusing, more disturbing is that the editor of a right-wing political news magazine is quoting Karl Marx in relation to Donald Trump. Read the sixth paragraph from the Huffington Post's article.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/aei-world-forum-donald-trump_us_56ddbd38e4b0ffe6f8ea125d
Either Bill Kristol doesn't see the disturbing parallel between this battle for a nation and the October Revolution in which the people were so disaffected that they rose up and fought down the tyrants that ruled them, or he's just tying the opposite ends together on the far side of the sphere.
Fortunately, this is a bloodless revolution. America hasn't yet been pushed to the brink as was done in Russia before 1917. But we are fed up, disillusioned and far more than done with politics as usual.
If he is just tying the ends together - taking the right all the way around to the point where it meets with the farthest left - that's one thing. If he is actually adopting Marxist theory relative to politics, that's something else again. Either way, it's not good for the Elites. They have been outed and some are throwing up their hands, swearing they aren't stained with... whatever that is.
Elon Musk of SpaceX - the commercial rocket scientists - was reported to be there according to HuffPost and several other outlets, but now he's running around in circles screaming that he wasn't.
Why not? If this group is so honorable, up-front and above-board, why not claim it? Or, if he wasn't there, why doesn't he just shut up and ignore the report that he was? Me thinks he doth protest too much.
Could it be that it is a tyrannical society that met on that island the other day? The leaders of the Pinky & The Brain Society for World Domination I wrote about a while back?
http://philippastories.blogspot.com/2015/12/the-pinky-brain-society-are-winding-up.html
Seems like it.
After all, these guys and the Bilderbergers (overlapping group-to-group in all meaningful ways) do run the world. That's become abundantly clear this year with the election and their knicker-knots bulging out their britches.
So The Donald is not who they want in the White House. They don't want him running the country because he isn't their ideal.
America is at a major crossroads. But it's not this one any more:
It's more like this one:
We have a lot of unknowns ahead of us, but it's no longer just a choice between This and This where Left and Right are indistinguishable from one another. Not unless they force Hilliary or some other political shill on us, which they might do.
One thing that might happen is that they'll wake up and realize that Hilliary is un-electable in the current climate. Even though she's being funded and shoved on us by the Donor Class because she represents the palatable status quo, Bernie is still making a big statement. If it tips too far, they might panic and throw her to the legal wolves as a sop to the American people. If they let her be indicted and thrust Biden into the fray the news would be all about her, about the indictment and the scandal and the American people (Democrats) might be distracted enough for the Elites to get their way.
As for Biden, he's popped up in the news again this week after a remarkably long absence. The media have actually tried to make him look intelligent and relevant (which won't last if he opens his mouth).
That still won't shift the conservative / moderate / independent American people who are lifting Trump over their shoulders. We'll look over at the circus but I don't think it will matter. I don't think it would be a distraction for us, regardless of what these asphyxiated idiots might think.
After all, we've made it clear as day that we don't want Hilliary. Nor do we want Biden or we would be clamoring for him. We don't want Marco or a used car salesman. We don't want anyone who has been even remotely tainted by Washington air (what little is left given the state of CO2 poisoning apparent in the insiders) and water.
We want an outsider. Someone unadultered by the filth of Washington politics.
Still, they don't get it. They are so hyped up on their own brilliance, they just don't get it. And that's fine. They'll do the Olympus thing up there while the mere mortals do their thing down here, where the real folks live. In the end, when the votes are counted, they'll have a couple of choices.
They can capitulate and accept what the people want for this election cycle. After all, there are several tens of million of each of us to each one of them - the odds look pretty good for our side (and it is down to sides at this point).
If there were an uprising, and let us be perfectly clear - I do not advocate anything like that - guess who would lose the most in the long run?
We would suffer, no doubt, but they would suffer worse. They would lose their power over us in a meaningful way. We would see who they are more clearly than we do now, and we would know what they're doing. It's harder to maintain control over a mass if the mass knows you're trying to control them. Masses tend not to like being suppressed.
They can keep their eyes shut, their fingers in their ears and shriek lalalalalalala at the top of their lungs, keep pretending what's happening really isn't.
Or, because these people are powerful and they are ruthless, they could have Trump assassinated.
The Kennedy assassination has never been rationally explained to my satisfaction or to the satisfaction of many others. I have watched documentaries and read articles on it, and I still feel dissatisfied with the 'explanation'. The Warren Commission stinks of cover-up and there is just too much coincidence - like Ruby showing up, wandering into the mob through which Oswald was being escorted, and shooting Oswald right in front of the cops and cameras. It just stinks like a barnyard on a 100 degree day at the height of summer.
Given that assassination has been used for political purpose down the centuries, and given the gut wrenching fear these people seem to be feeling, made apparent by their coming out of the woodwork as far as they have, I won't take that possibility off the table because it could be one option these people might consider.
I do take some solace, though, in the fact that Trump doesn't just have the Secret Service detail assigned. He also has his own private security - who are more loyal to him than the Secret Service ever will be. I just hope they're better than the Secret Service, or that they're having the same feelings and suspicions I am about it. I pray that they're not only watching their boss and the crowd, but that they're also paying close attention to the government employees in their midst.
So, in the here and now, Karl Marx meets Pinky & The Brain and here we are. Secret societies, world domination and a people fed up with being held down and controlled. The next months will be interesting, no doubt.
Keep watching - this is an historic time.
Best~
Philippa
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories
It seems that Donald has hit another big nerve.
First it was Mexico with the wall. Last week Vicente Fox, in a highly presidential moment, dropped the F-bomb on national television, startling the crap out of Maria Bartaromo on Fox Business when he did it live.
Now it's Bill Kristol and the Elites who just held their annual American Enterprise Institute meeting. This is yet another private affair, more secretive than the annual Bilderberg meetings, held on a private island off the coast of Georgia (USA, although it might as well be the Soviet Union).
What's semi-amusing, more disturbing is that the editor of a right-wing political news magazine is quoting Karl Marx in relation to Donald Trump. Read the sixth paragraph from the Huffington Post's article.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/aei-world-forum-donald-trump_us_56ddbd38e4b0ffe6f8ea125d
Either Bill Kristol doesn't see the disturbing parallel between this battle for a nation and the October Revolution in which the people were so disaffected that they rose up and fought down the tyrants that ruled them, or he's just tying the opposite ends together on the far side of the sphere.
Fortunately, this is a bloodless revolution. America hasn't yet been pushed to the brink as was done in Russia before 1917. But we are fed up, disillusioned and far more than done with politics as usual.
If he is just tying the ends together - taking the right all the way around to the point where it meets with the farthest left - that's one thing. If he is actually adopting Marxist theory relative to politics, that's something else again. Either way, it's not good for the Elites. They have been outed and some are throwing up their hands, swearing they aren't stained with... whatever that is.
Elon Musk of SpaceX - the commercial rocket scientists - was reported to be there according to HuffPost and several other outlets, but now he's running around in circles screaming that he wasn't.
Why not? If this group is so honorable, up-front and above-board, why not claim it? Or, if he wasn't there, why doesn't he just shut up and ignore the report that he was? Me thinks he doth protest too much.
Could it be that it is a tyrannical society that met on that island the other day? The leaders of the Pinky & The Brain Society for World Domination I wrote about a while back?
http://philippastories.blogspot.com/2015/12/the-pinky-brain-society-are-winding-up.html
Seems like it.
After all, these guys and the Bilderbergers (overlapping group-to-group in all meaningful ways) do run the world. That's become abundantly clear this year with the election and their knicker-knots bulging out their britches.
So The Donald is not who they want in the White House. They don't want him running the country because he isn't their ideal.
America is at a major crossroads. But it's not this one any more:
It's more like this one:
 | |
| amritaspearlsofwisdom.com |
One thing that might happen is that they'll wake up and realize that Hilliary is un-electable in the current climate. Even though she's being funded and shoved on us by the Donor Class because she represents the palatable status quo, Bernie is still making a big statement. If it tips too far, they might panic and throw her to the legal wolves as a sop to the American people. If they let her be indicted and thrust Biden into the fray the news would be all about her, about the indictment and the scandal and the American people (Democrats) might be distracted enough for the Elites to get their way.
As for Biden, he's popped up in the news again this week after a remarkably long absence. The media have actually tried to make him look intelligent and relevant (which won't last if he opens his mouth).
That still won't shift the conservative / moderate / independent American people who are lifting Trump over their shoulders. We'll look over at the circus but I don't think it will matter. I don't think it would be a distraction for us, regardless of what these asphyxiated idiots might think.
After all, we've made it clear as day that we don't want Hilliary. Nor do we want Biden or we would be clamoring for him. We don't want Marco or a used car salesman. We don't want anyone who has been even remotely tainted by Washington air (what little is left given the state of CO2 poisoning apparent in the insiders) and water.
We want an outsider. Someone unadultered by the filth of Washington politics.
Still, they don't get it. They are so hyped up on their own brilliance, they just don't get it. And that's fine. They'll do the Olympus thing up there while the mere mortals do their thing down here, where the real folks live. In the end, when the votes are counted, they'll have a couple of choices.
They can capitulate and accept what the people want for this election cycle. After all, there are several tens of million of each of us to each one of them - the odds look pretty good for our side (and it is down to sides at this point).
If there were an uprising, and let us be perfectly clear - I do not advocate anything like that - guess who would lose the most in the long run?
We would suffer, no doubt, but they would suffer worse. They would lose their power over us in a meaningful way. We would see who they are more clearly than we do now, and we would know what they're doing. It's harder to maintain control over a mass if the mass knows you're trying to control them. Masses tend not to like being suppressed.
They can keep their eyes shut, their fingers in their ears and shriek lalalalalalala at the top of their lungs, keep pretending what's happening really isn't.
Or, because these people are powerful and they are ruthless, they could have Trump assassinated.
The Kennedy assassination has never been rationally explained to my satisfaction or to the satisfaction of many others. I have watched documentaries and read articles on it, and I still feel dissatisfied with the 'explanation'. The Warren Commission stinks of cover-up and there is just too much coincidence - like Ruby showing up, wandering into the mob through which Oswald was being escorted, and shooting Oswald right in front of the cops and cameras. It just stinks like a barnyard on a 100 degree day at the height of summer.
Given that assassination has been used for political purpose down the centuries, and given the gut wrenching fear these people seem to be feeling, made apparent by their coming out of the woodwork as far as they have, I won't take that possibility off the table because it could be one option these people might consider.
I do take some solace, though, in the fact that Trump doesn't just have the Secret Service detail assigned. He also has his own private security - who are more loyal to him than the Secret Service ever will be. I just hope they're better than the Secret Service, or that they're having the same feelings and suspicions I am about it. I pray that they're not only watching their boss and the crowd, but that they're also paying close attention to the government employees in their midst.
So, in the here and now, Karl Marx meets Pinky & The Brain and here we are. Secret societies, world domination and a people fed up with being held down and controlled. The next months will be interesting, no doubt.
Keep watching - this is an historic time.
Best~
Philippa
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories
Sunday, March 6, 2016
What the Right & Their Media Tools Don't Get
Straight out of the gate: I do not pretend to speak for anyone else. Not being in the mind or heart of anyone else, I can't. I speak for myself but being a writer, and an observer of human behavior, I can pretty well guess what's in the hearts and minds of at least some others.
With that said: The Establishment Right and the Media are colluding to blow this country apart and devolve it into a leftist / socialist state. If they do not stop working to undermine and subvert the will of the people, that is precisely what will happen. Not only will they gift wrap and bow tie the White House for Hilliary Clinton or Bernie Sanders, they will also guarantee at least a generation of leftist Supreme Court rulings that will utterly change the face of America forever.
Scalia's seat is open. Bader-Ginsberg is waiting to retire and will no doubt step down the second after Hilliary lifts her hand from the Bible after being sworn into office. It is likely that at least one or two other Justices will retire or die in the next four years - so it's going to be a critical time for the Supreme Court.
The so-called Right - the Establishment, Donor Class and Airhead Elites - would do well to bear this in mind.
Trump's following - the massive crowds at his rallies, the new voters registering with the Republican party, the cross-the-board blocs that are voting for him - are all indicative of a FACT.
FACT: For the first time in nearly thirty years people are enthusiastic about a candidate.
FACT: Despite the best efforts by the Elitists to bring this man down, to destroy his candidacy, he is still winning. Even bringing Mitt Romney out - a disgusting human being for willingly being a sock puppet of these Elitist morons - didn't completely stop Trump's momentum.
FACT: Trump won two of four states yesterday - not resoundingly, but by enough - and they were the two states with the highest delegate counts.
FACT: In Michigan this morning, the latest NBC/Marist poll shows Trump is leading Cruz by about twenty points.
FACT: The Annointed One v.1 in the form of Jeb!, despite the money class pushing him hard, went down in embarrassing fashion. In early February, he actually had to beg a "crowd" at one of his so-called rallies to clap.
FACT: The Annointed One v.2 has won one state - Minnesota. Given the fact that there have been nineteen caucuses and elections and he has managed one win does not bode well for his viability.
FACT: Donald Trump has won more states than Ted Cruz by a 2:1 margin (twelve states to six) and leads in the delegate count.
So, with all of those facts to hand, what does the donor class fronted by Mitt Romney, aided and abetted by the likes of Rich Lowry, George Will, Bill Kristol and the other Airhead Elites intend for the future of this country?
Do they really want to hand this election to someone who is a known criminal?
Just because Hilliary hasn't been indicted or convicted (and if either of those events was to happen this year, guess who would be at the top of Obie-One's pardon list) doesn't mean she's innocent. There is enough information out in the public realm to show that she is far from innocent - and I'm confident the FBI has at least five times as much that hasn't leaked.
If they mess around with a brokered convention and take the delegates away from the front-runner and hand them to someone We The People don't want, they will hand the general election to the left.
I, for one, won't rush out and participate in something that I know will destroy this country. That would be like joining the mob that's tearing down my house. 'Oh! No! What are you doing! *Oh, wait - there are more of them than of me, I guess I'll join in.*' That would be the equivalent.
If I do not believe in and trust the candidate to put America's interests first, I will not vote for them and I can state, as things are now, I will not vote for Ted Cruz. He is, in my honest opinion, a SLEAZE of the worst kind.
Talk about someone having a 'tenuous grasp on facts'. He is dishonest about other people (check out PolitiFact).
He is boring as dirt and he has all the appeal of a low-end used car salesman.
Apparently, despite his 'deep faith' he has not read the passages in the Bible that talk about people in glass houses or about bearing false witness.
Before he casts stones at Trump's glass house, he would do well to look to his own.
Before he makes didactic statements about Trump's beliefs and conservatism, he would do well to consider what the Bible says about 'one who breathes out lies, and sows discord among brothers'. When Cruz claims to know what is in Trump's heart and mind, he is stomping along the razor thin boundary of the Ninth Commandment.
I do think he would be a reasonable pick for AG or, perhaps, a member of SCOTUS, but not as president.
So, again, what is the Vapid Right's plan for this great country? I would really like to know, but they're not saying - which is dangerous.
Do I think Donald Trump is the be-all, end-all of perfection? Hell no! He has warts aplenty.
He doesn't know as much as he should about foreign affairs and policy, but I trust him to know what he doesn't know and to fill in the gap with someone over qualified. Do I wish, fervently, that he was stronger on that subject? Hell yes!
What I would like, more than anything, is for him to call in favors in the next day or two - to bring on board Trump One people who know what's what around the world and have them teach him. He's smart and I think he's a quick study so he could bone up on everything he needs to know immediately, before the next debate. He doesn't have to have a deep and profound understanding - just enough to be able to address the points well and in knowledgeable fashion. The deep and profound understanding can come later, with reliance on people who know more of the nuances.
I trust him on trade - because he's a trader and he knows other capable qualified people who are the same.
I trust him on immigration. He has been vocal about the wall and he has, apparently, scared the Bejeezus out of Mexico - they are reacting to him on the subject so we know he's hit a nerve.
What is Cruz's plan? What does the used car salesman plan?
He's parroting Trump on the wall, but I sincerely doubt he'll do anything. I think he's another insider who likes the status quo because until Trump started talking and catching the media's notice about the wall, he wasn't an advocate.
Immigration is a poison pill inside the Beltway, let's be clear. If you are anti-illegal immigrant, you're painted as a bigot, a racist, narrow-minded, you name it. Cruz, Rubio and the other pro-pols don't like that. Trump doesn't care what names he's called - he's made that clear.
So what plan do the Right - GOP / RNC and the Pointy Media Pinheads have for this country if they steal the election from Trump (assuming he doesn't gather enough delegates for a clear win)? I would really like to know but they're not saying.
So, given that status quo of disgusting hatred and silence from the Elites and Establishment, I will keep rooting for Trump. When the time comes that I have a chance, I will vote for him because of all the people in the field, he is the only one worthy of my vote.
Best~
Philippa
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories
With that said: The Establishment Right and the Media are colluding to blow this country apart and devolve it into a leftist / socialist state. If they do not stop working to undermine and subvert the will of the people, that is precisely what will happen. Not only will they gift wrap and bow tie the White House for Hilliary Clinton or Bernie Sanders, they will also guarantee at least a generation of leftist Supreme Court rulings that will utterly change the face of America forever.
Scalia's seat is open. Bader-Ginsberg is waiting to retire and will no doubt step down the second after Hilliary lifts her hand from the Bible after being sworn into office. It is likely that at least one or two other Justices will retire or die in the next four years - so it's going to be a critical time for the Supreme Court.
The so-called Right - the Establishment, Donor Class and Airhead Elites - would do well to bear this in mind.
Trump's following - the massive crowds at his rallies, the new voters registering with the Republican party, the cross-the-board blocs that are voting for him - are all indicative of a FACT.
FACT: For the first time in nearly thirty years people are enthusiastic about a candidate.
FACT: Despite the best efforts by the Elitists to bring this man down, to destroy his candidacy, he is still winning. Even bringing Mitt Romney out - a disgusting human being for willingly being a sock puppet of these Elitist morons - didn't completely stop Trump's momentum.
FACT: Trump won two of four states yesterday - not resoundingly, but by enough - and they were the two states with the highest delegate counts.
FACT: In Michigan this morning, the latest NBC/Marist poll shows Trump is leading Cruz by about twenty points.
FACT: The Annointed One v.1 in the form of Jeb!, despite the money class pushing him hard, went down in embarrassing fashion. In early February, he actually had to beg a "crowd" at one of his so-called rallies to clap.
FACT: The Annointed One v.2 has won one state - Minnesota. Given the fact that there have been nineteen caucuses and elections and he has managed one win does not bode well for his viability.
FACT: Donald Trump has won more states than Ted Cruz by a 2:1 margin (twelve states to six) and leads in the delegate count.
So, with all of those facts to hand, what does the donor class fronted by Mitt Romney, aided and abetted by the likes of Rich Lowry, George Will, Bill Kristol and the other Airhead Elites intend for the future of this country?
Do they really want to hand this election to someone who is a known criminal?
Just because Hilliary hasn't been indicted or convicted (and if either of those events was to happen this year, guess who would be at the top of Obie-One's pardon list) doesn't mean she's innocent. There is enough information out in the public realm to show that she is far from innocent - and I'm confident the FBI has at least five times as much that hasn't leaked.
If they mess around with a brokered convention and take the delegates away from the front-runner and hand them to someone We The People don't want, they will hand the general election to the left.
I, for one, won't rush out and participate in something that I know will destroy this country. That would be like joining the mob that's tearing down my house. 'Oh! No! What are you doing! *Oh, wait - there are more of them than of me, I guess I'll join in.*' That would be the equivalent.
If I do not believe in and trust the candidate to put America's interests first, I will not vote for them and I can state, as things are now, I will not vote for Ted Cruz. He is, in my honest opinion, a SLEAZE of the worst kind.
Talk about someone having a 'tenuous grasp on facts'. He is dishonest about other people (check out PolitiFact).
He is boring as dirt and he has all the appeal of a low-end used car salesman.
Apparently, despite his 'deep faith' he has not read the passages in the Bible that talk about people in glass houses or about bearing false witness.
Before he casts stones at Trump's glass house, he would do well to look to his own.
Before he makes didactic statements about Trump's beliefs and conservatism, he would do well to consider what the Bible says about 'one who breathes out lies, and sows discord among brothers'. When Cruz claims to know what is in Trump's heart and mind, he is stomping along the razor thin boundary of the Ninth Commandment.
I do think he would be a reasonable pick for AG or, perhaps, a member of SCOTUS, but not as president.
So, again, what is the Vapid Right's plan for this great country? I would really like to know, but they're not saying - which is dangerous.
Do I think Donald Trump is the be-all, end-all of perfection? Hell no! He has warts aplenty.
He doesn't know as much as he should about foreign affairs and policy, but I trust him to know what he doesn't know and to fill in the gap with someone over qualified. Do I wish, fervently, that he was stronger on that subject? Hell yes!
What I would like, more than anything, is for him to call in favors in the next day or two - to bring on board Trump One people who know what's what around the world and have them teach him. He's smart and I think he's a quick study so he could bone up on everything he needs to know immediately, before the next debate. He doesn't have to have a deep and profound understanding - just enough to be able to address the points well and in knowledgeable fashion. The deep and profound understanding can come later, with reliance on people who know more of the nuances.
I trust him on trade - because he's a trader and he knows other capable qualified people who are the same.
I trust him on immigration. He has been vocal about the wall and he has, apparently, scared the Bejeezus out of Mexico - they are reacting to him on the subject so we know he's hit a nerve.
What is Cruz's plan? What does the used car salesman plan?
He's parroting Trump on the wall, but I sincerely doubt he'll do anything. I think he's another insider who likes the status quo because until Trump started talking and catching the media's notice about the wall, he wasn't an advocate.
Immigration is a poison pill inside the Beltway, let's be clear. If you are anti-illegal immigrant, you're painted as a bigot, a racist, narrow-minded, you name it. Cruz, Rubio and the other pro-pols don't like that. Trump doesn't care what names he's called - he's made that clear.
So what plan do the Right - GOP / RNC and the Pointy Media Pinheads have for this country if they steal the election from Trump (assuming he doesn't gather enough delegates for a clear win)? I would really like to know but they're not saying.
So, given that status quo of disgusting hatred and silence from the Elites and Establishment, I will keep rooting for Trump. When the time comes that I have a chance, I will vote for him because of all the people in the field, he is the only one worthy of my vote.
Best~
Philippa
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories
Saturday, March 5, 2016
Bilderbergers, Romney and the Establishment
If you don't know who or what the Bilderbergers are and how they relate to our Presidential election, Mitt Romney, the National Review (Rich Lowry & Co.) and world politics, here's a brief primer. Before I start, I will say this is a snapshot view. I haven't studied them in depth. I've heard about them for years but have never dug into the group until today. There is plenty of solid information out there - non-conspiracy theorist sources - on the 'net if you choose to delve more deeply.
In a nutshell, the Bilderberg group was most recently established in 1954. One journalist (Daniel Estulin) claims that it goes back centuries, to the 'Black Monks of Venice'. I haven't delved that deeply but there's a book by him that's available from Amazon and a fairly brief RT News interview with him available on YouTube.
It is a group that has been, for the most part, highly secretive. They hold annual meetings in places that can be locked down and heavily guarded without too much trouble.
Members include bankers, industry leaders, including computer and internet industry leaders, and politicians from around the world. The list is impressive and represents almost every single country with a dime on the planet. These are the richest of the rich, the most powerful of the powerful and I have little doubt that they like the drug of power and wouldn't mind more.
In any case, back to current day and current events.
According to the Guardian newspaper, Romney attended the 2012 Bilderberg meeting when he was running for president.
Obama attended Bilderberg meetings. So did the Bush father (who is a member) and son and, if Bush III had gotten the RNC nod this summer, he would have gone to worship at the feet of these people.
This is a group of people who, based on every opinion I have found across the web - conspiracy theorists to journalists - for all intents and purposes want to control the world. Not necessary rule the world, but at least control it.
This list from Wikipedia is, I suspect, incomplete, but it makes for interesting reading:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Bilderberg_participants
They pick our political leaders - Romney was run by the Bilderbergers in 2012. In 2008 it was Hilliary Clinton. Too bad for the Bilderbergers, but her run was subverted by the damned sheeple who decided to go for the 'good-looking articulate black guy' (Joe Biden's words, not mine, thank you). So Hilliary is back now and it's looking like she's a shoo-in for the Democrat nomination no matter what the sheeple want in Bernie.
Aside: Bernie doesn't look or sound all that interested, anyway. Otherwise, why isn't he hitting Hilliary loud and hard on her e-mail mess? Could it be that the non-lovefest meeting between Obie-One and Berns a few weeks ago was a hard and fast warning from a Bilderberg attendee to a wannabe? I suspect that might have been part of it.
This year, the Bilderbergers have got their panties in an historic twist over Trump's insurgency over Bush III. They kicked Bush III to the curb when he couldn't gain traction, and he dropped out of the race. Now they're backing Marco Rubio - the milquetoast little boy with whom they met in 2012.
So what is the interest of these people, this cabal, in US politics? After all, looking at that list, most are from Europe and Asia, right?
Well - as America goes, so goes the world. A while back, we gave the Bilderbergers a glimmer of an idea when they looked at our Constitutional republic.
We have a collection of states which, according to the Tenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, have some autonomy - much like the European states. There's an inter-dependency and an independence side-by-side in both places.
What if they could unify the world countries into a single entity? Heck - it was working in America, what if they tried to unify another region in similar fashion? Could it work there?
The EU was the litmus test. Individual laws and constitutions, currencies, politics, and everything else suddenly went by the wayside. They became a union with a new constitution, new laws and legal processes and a new currency. It was a litmus test - could it be done and could it work on a larger scale?
Signs have been more positive than negative that it could work. Except for Greece. That was a wart they missed. But, they pulled out the stops and funded Greece and it's back up on tottery feet. A strong economic wind and it will collapse again but for now, it's standing.
Now the US Treasury - sitting deep in the pockets of the Bilderbergers - is floating the idea of eliminating the $100 bill. They say it's to limit counterfeiting - which is utter nonsense. Nonsense to the point of stinking to high Heaven since anyone who knows even the first thing about counterfeiting knows that the $20 is both the most highly circulated bill and the one most likely to be counterfeited.
The dark side to that proposal is to phase out physical currency. No more bucks or fivers or ten-spots or Benjamins (the $100) that can be folded inside a wallet. Instead, it would all be credit - digits on a computer.
I suspect that Bitcoin was the first attempt at this, but it never caught on. I don't know what other people thought of it, but I hated the idea of giving up my control for supposed convenience. I also wondered about hacking and suspected that it would be far too easy for those who held my money to abscond with it - so I never even looked into it.
Now they're pushing the idea of getting rid of physical money - the cash transactions many of us participate in every day.
Debit cards are one step. Credit cards are another. If they can wrest the physical money from our hands, guess what? They suddenly have absolute control over us.
First, if we want to buy anything, we have to have a piece of plastic to access the money that's in the banks controlled by the Bilderberg group (take a look at the list - all of the world's major banks are represented). What if they don't like us? What if they don't like the way we think or write or talk or vote? What if they don't like us enough that they decline to provide us with that piece of plastic? What would you do if you had money in the bank but no way to get to it?
Second, if they have control of all the money, they can decide what limits to impose on our access to it.
US banks already impose limits on how much you can withdraw at any single time without them filing a report to the Treasury Department. Allegedly, it's to prevent money laundering and drug trafficking, but what if you have a big cash transaction to make - maybe you want to buy a car with cash, or you have something that costs a lot but comes with a deep discount for cash payment. Do you really want the private details of your withdrawal sent to the government? Well, too bad, so sad, that's how it is.
Third, if they have all of the money in digits on a computer someplace, how hard would it be for them to impose negative interest rates? To charge us a percentage rate - that can be changed anytime at their whim - for keeping our money in their bank? It's already being talked about. It's already a law on the books - quietly passed at the G20 meeting a couple of years back when Cypress implemented bail-ins - the confiscation of depositor's money to stabilize the Cyprian economy.
Fourth, how about those bail-ins? Let's say you have worked and saved and penny-pinched your entire life. You're looking forward to retirement and think you have enough put away to do so in reasonable comfort. Suddenly you learn through a notification or sudden shock of showing up to make a withdrawal that the balance you thought you had no longer exists. The bank 'needed' it more than they deemed you do. They bailed it in to pay off debt or cover losses or something else.
Who cares that it was your money? Who cares that you scrimped and saved and lived on pork and beans for forty-plus years so you could retire with peace of mind, travel and do what you want to do. Who cares? The bank doesn't. It's not going to say, 'whoops, sorry. We'll put that back right now... there you go!' That money will be gone. Gone for good just as it was in Cypress when they implemented bail-ins.
So that's the dark side of the Bilderberg group - and Romney with his nasty little-man speech the other day, and the Washington Establishment in the forms of the National Review and the Weekly Standard want to perpetuate the Bilderberger's power. After all, one of the items on the agenda for their 2015 meeting was, surprise surprise, US Elections.
And, here's a tie-in for you: The National Review came out with their despicable hit-pieces against Donald Trump's candidacy. Well, guess what. The founder of the National Review, William F. Buckley, Jr. was a member of the Bilderberg group as reported in the Hamilton Spectator (Ontario, Canada) in June, 1996. Here we are, twenty years later, and the Bilderbergers are back with Romney, Rich Lowry & Co. and other Elitists all coming out against Donald Trump.
It all ties and it's all scary because they're out in the open now, and while they're backing candidates and political rags (National Review, et al.) protesting through front men and women that it's for 'our' good, I think most of us know that 'our' good comes a far distant last place to their good. Bear that in mind when you hit the polls this year - Bernie or Donald who are truly independent. Not Hilliary or Rubio who are in the pockets of these Elitist Elites.
Think about it, do some reading, and have a wonderful day.
Best~
Philippa
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories
In a nutshell, the Bilderberg group was most recently established in 1954. One journalist (Daniel Estulin) claims that it goes back centuries, to the 'Black Monks of Venice'. I haven't delved that deeply but there's a book by him that's available from Amazon and a fairly brief RT News interview with him available on YouTube.
It is a group that has been, for the most part, highly secretive. They hold annual meetings in places that can be locked down and heavily guarded without too much trouble.
Members include bankers, industry leaders, including computer and internet industry leaders, and politicians from around the world. The list is impressive and represents almost every single country with a dime on the planet. These are the richest of the rich, the most powerful of the powerful and I have little doubt that they like the drug of power and wouldn't mind more.
In any case, back to current day and current events.
According to the Guardian newspaper, Romney attended the 2012 Bilderberg meeting when he was running for president.
Obama attended Bilderberg meetings. So did the Bush father (who is a member) and son and, if Bush III had gotten the RNC nod this summer, he would have gone to worship at the feet of these people.
This is a group of people who, based on every opinion I have found across the web - conspiracy theorists to journalists - for all intents and purposes want to control the world. Not necessary rule the world, but at least control it.
This list from Wikipedia is, I suspect, incomplete, but it makes for interesting reading:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Bilderberg_participants
They pick our political leaders - Romney was run by the Bilderbergers in 2012. In 2008 it was Hilliary Clinton. Too bad for the Bilderbergers, but her run was subverted by the damned sheeple who decided to go for the 'good-looking articulate black guy' (Joe Biden's words, not mine, thank you). So Hilliary is back now and it's looking like she's a shoo-in for the Democrat nomination no matter what the sheeple want in Bernie.
Aside: Bernie doesn't look or sound all that interested, anyway. Otherwise, why isn't he hitting Hilliary loud and hard on her e-mail mess? Could it be that the non-lovefest meeting between Obie-One and Berns a few weeks ago was a hard and fast warning from a Bilderberg attendee to a wannabe? I suspect that might have been part of it.
This year, the Bilderbergers have got their panties in an historic twist over Trump's insurgency over Bush III. They kicked Bush III to the curb when he couldn't gain traction, and he dropped out of the race. Now they're backing Marco Rubio - the milquetoast little boy with whom they met in 2012.
So what is the interest of these people, this cabal, in US politics? After all, looking at that list, most are from Europe and Asia, right?
Well - as America goes, so goes the world. A while back, we gave the Bilderbergers a glimmer of an idea when they looked at our Constitutional republic.
We have a collection of states which, according to the Tenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, have some autonomy - much like the European states. There's an inter-dependency and an independence side-by-side in both places.
What if they could unify the world countries into a single entity? Heck - it was working in America, what if they tried to unify another region in similar fashion? Could it work there?
The EU was the litmus test. Individual laws and constitutions, currencies, politics, and everything else suddenly went by the wayside. They became a union with a new constitution, new laws and legal processes and a new currency. It was a litmus test - could it be done and could it work on a larger scale?
Signs have been more positive than negative that it could work. Except for Greece. That was a wart they missed. But, they pulled out the stops and funded Greece and it's back up on tottery feet. A strong economic wind and it will collapse again but for now, it's standing.
Now the US Treasury - sitting deep in the pockets of the Bilderbergers - is floating the idea of eliminating the $100 bill. They say it's to limit counterfeiting - which is utter nonsense. Nonsense to the point of stinking to high Heaven since anyone who knows even the first thing about counterfeiting knows that the $20 is both the most highly circulated bill and the one most likely to be counterfeited.
The dark side to that proposal is to phase out physical currency. No more bucks or fivers or ten-spots or Benjamins (the $100) that can be folded inside a wallet. Instead, it would all be credit - digits on a computer.
I suspect that Bitcoin was the first attempt at this, but it never caught on. I don't know what other people thought of it, but I hated the idea of giving up my control for supposed convenience. I also wondered about hacking and suspected that it would be far too easy for those who held my money to abscond with it - so I never even looked into it.
Now they're pushing the idea of getting rid of physical money - the cash transactions many of us participate in every day.
Debit cards are one step. Credit cards are another. If they can wrest the physical money from our hands, guess what? They suddenly have absolute control over us.
First, if we want to buy anything, we have to have a piece of plastic to access the money that's in the banks controlled by the Bilderberg group (take a look at the list - all of the world's major banks are represented). What if they don't like us? What if they don't like the way we think or write or talk or vote? What if they don't like us enough that they decline to provide us with that piece of plastic? What would you do if you had money in the bank but no way to get to it?
Second, if they have control of all the money, they can decide what limits to impose on our access to it.
US banks already impose limits on how much you can withdraw at any single time without them filing a report to the Treasury Department. Allegedly, it's to prevent money laundering and drug trafficking, but what if you have a big cash transaction to make - maybe you want to buy a car with cash, or you have something that costs a lot but comes with a deep discount for cash payment. Do you really want the private details of your withdrawal sent to the government? Well, too bad, so sad, that's how it is.
Third, if they have all of the money in digits on a computer someplace, how hard would it be for them to impose negative interest rates? To charge us a percentage rate - that can be changed anytime at their whim - for keeping our money in their bank? It's already being talked about. It's already a law on the books - quietly passed at the G20 meeting a couple of years back when Cypress implemented bail-ins - the confiscation of depositor's money to stabilize the Cyprian economy.
Fourth, how about those bail-ins? Let's say you have worked and saved and penny-pinched your entire life. You're looking forward to retirement and think you have enough put away to do so in reasonable comfort. Suddenly you learn through a notification or sudden shock of showing up to make a withdrawal that the balance you thought you had no longer exists. The bank 'needed' it more than they deemed you do. They bailed it in to pay off debt or cover losses or something else.
Who cares that it was your money? Who cares that you scrimped and saved and lived on pork and beans for forty-plus years so you could retire with peace of mind, travel and do what you want to do. Who cares? The bank doesn't. It's not going to say, 'whoops, sorry. We'll put that back right now... there you go!' That money will be gone. Gone for good just as it was in Cypress when they implemented bail-ins.
So that's the dark side of the Bilderberg group - and Romney with his nasty little-man speech the other day, and the Washington Establishment in the forms of the National Review and the Weekly Standard want to perpetuate the Bilderberger's power. After all, one of the items on the agenda for their 2015 meeting was, surprise surprise, US Elections.
And, here's a tie-in for you: The National Review came out with their despicable hit-pieces against Donald Trump's candidacy. Well, guess what. The founder of the National Review, William F. Buckley, Jr. was a member of the Bilderberg group as reported in the Hamilton Spectator (Ontario, Canada) in June, 1996. Here we are, twenty years later, and the Bilderbergers are back with Romney, Rich Lowry & Co. and other Elitists all coming out against Donald Trump.
It all ties and it's all scary because they're out in the open now, and while they're backing candidates and political rags (National Review, et al.) protesting through front men and women that it's for 'our' good, I think most of us know that 'our' good comes a far distant last place to their good. Bear that in mind when you hit the polls this year - Bernie or Donald who are truly independent. Not Hilliary or Rubio who are in the pockets of these Elitist Elites.
Think about it, do some reading, and have a wonderful day.
Best~
Philippa
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories
Thursday, March 3, 2016
Rich Lowry & Co. - A Study in Bloated Arrogance
Will Rich Lowry (editor of the National Review) and his cronies blow up what remains of the Political Right in this country? They're working hard on doing just that. Based on all that I've seen and heard in the past months, particularly in recent weeks, it looks like it. Particularly now that Mitt Romney - a sock puppet of the Republican Establishment - is going to come out and make some sort of speech no one cares about and no one but the media will listen to.
They have their noses so firmly planted against the tree trunk of their ideology, they don't see the rest of the forest is on fire.
First, they banded together and wrote a bunch of hit pieces in their political magazine - dedicated an entire edition to them. Twenty or so pointy headed arrogant wannabe despots wrote scathing articles about someone just because he threatens their position in the World of Washington. They're afraid, and rightly so, that their moneyed influence will go straight through the U-bend of life because they won't have a grip on this person. He will not be malleable to their way of thinking.
After that, and after having their front men and women talking about it around the networks (which they drive, too), they fussed and fussed about the fact that we American people are still too stupid to recognize that they know what's good for us better than we do. We're not falling in line. The sheep aren't paying attention to the shepherd or his sheepdogs. We're going our own direction and it's infuriating the shepherds.
Jeb Bush, the marionette they picked to be our president flamed out in spectacular fashion after just a few weeks.
They looked around, discarded the other governor in the race - Kasich - and decided to rally behind a new guy - Marco. He looks like a nice guy. I used to think he's a nice guy, but he's a guy who looks like the perfect candidate for a Good Humor ice cream ad. In the days since the last debate, he's been routinely embarrassing himself, showing that he has the temperament of a petulant four-year old. His donors, no doubt the same people who are staring at the ideological tree trunk, pushed him to attack the front runner. Well, guess what? Those attacks make him look and sound like a spoiled brat.
He's ridiculing the Alpha candidate. He's not attacking the Alpha candidate's platform or policies. He's talking about physical aspects and the spray-on tan. It's embarrassing to have this man running around saying he wants to be president.
As rough-around-the-edges as the Alpha male in this fight might be, at least he has the capacity to act like a reasonable adult. He showed that in South Carolina and on Super Tuesday when he held press conferences. Not only did he act like a reasonable adult, even detractors in the media said he looked and sounded presidential.
Still, these arrogant ideologues are foisting their choice on America through well-funded Super PACs.
Rubio's super PAC is Conservative Solutions led by J. Warren Tompkins. He and his buddy Chris Mottola brought us two versions of the Bush family, ending with Hank Paulson and the economic debacle of the mid-2000s. Thanks a lot, guys.
Then they offered up the milquetoast of John McCain for president in 2008, against Barack Obama. That was an embarrassment. Whatever fire McCain once had has been sublimated by immersion in the Washington cesspit.
And now they're working hard to undermine Trump's candidacy so they can bring us more of the same.
The super PACs are out there spreading outright lies and half-truths - like the one about Trump banning disabled vets from Trump Tower. Not true, folks.
Trump asked the city to move street vendors, some of whom had disabled vet permits, from the sidewalk in front of his property. Instead, the ad makes it sound as if Trump barred the doors and prevented disabled vets from the building itself.
There are other lies, but the volume of the hate-filled ads shows the desperation of the Right-wing establishment. Now they're trotting Mitt Romney out of the closet to blast Trump in another hate-filled dissertation. To me, it looks like desperation.
What's astonishing to me, and to others who are paying attention to this, is that these self-righteous arrogant bloated egos don't see what they're doing.
The American people are the ones who are called out in the Founding documents. We The People, as I've said before, isn't just an idea or words on a piece of parchment. It's bigger than an idea - it's an ideal, and it's what the Founders promised: a government of, for and by the people.
Rich Lowry, George Will, Erick Erickson and all the other arrogant pinheads give lip service to the Founders but their actions shout that it isn't about the Founders or the dream the Founders had for a United States of America. Instead, it's all and only about them, about power.
As I see it, one of three things can come of this:
1) The Republican party will shatter like a mirror dropped from the top floor of Trump Tower. It will break along factional lines - The People who support Trump and those who don't.
Rich Lowry & Co., and by that it's all inclusive of everyone who is bucking what the people want for themselves, will hold their control of our government. They will put a person into the White House who is a puppet - an empty suit, just as George Bush I and George Bush II were empty suits and just as Barack Obama is an empty suit, owned by George Soros, Warren Buffet and the left.
2) The American people will rise up and push Trump into the White House. The Republican Establishment will have apoplexy and implode (God! Do I hope that happens!!!). We'll have four years of a real representative democracy - as the Founders intended.
If that first four years is successful - if Trump does at least some of what he's said he'll do - we could get eight years and a lot of forward movement toward what this country should be but isn't because of policies pushed and enacted through puppetry.
3) Rich Lowry & Co. will, by virtue of their resistance, turn off the people they need to get a right-wing candidate into the White House and we'll end up with at least four-years of George Soros and Warren Buffet fronted by Hilliary Clinton.
I'll say it right here and right now: If Trump is not the nominee of the Republican party come summer, I will not vote in November. There won't be any point in voting in November and I am genuinely willing to wager my life that a lot of other people will feel the same and will stay home, giving the left a de facto win because I will NOT vote for someone I don't believe in.
If Rich Lowry & Co. want to destroy the United States of America, they are on the right path. They are doing a fine job of it with Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush and the other sock puppets.
I believe in Donald Trump. I do not think he's perfect. I do not think he's as self-serving as he's being made out. I do think that he's honest and that he does want to make America Great again.
For what it's worth, that's my take on it this morning.
Have a wonderful day.
Best~
Philippa
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories
They have their noses so firmly planted against the tree trunk of their ideology, they don't see the rest of the forest is on fire.
First, they banded together and wrote a bunch of hit pieces in their political magazine - dedicated an entire edition to them. Twenty or so pointy headed arrogant wannabe despots wrote scathing articles about someone just because he threatens their position in the World of Washington. They're afraid, and rightly so, that their moneyed influence will go straight through the U-bend of life because they won't have a grip on this person. He will not be malleable to their way of thinking.
After that, and after having their front men and women talking about it around the networks (which they drive, too), they fussed and fussed about the fact that we American people are still too stupid to recognize that they know what's good for us better than we do. We're not falling in line. The sheep aren't paying attention to the shepherd or his sheepdogs. We're going our own direction and it's infuriating the shepherds.
Jeb Bush, the marionette they picked to be our president flamed out in spectacular fashion after just a few weeks.
They looked around, discarded the other governor in the race - Kasich - and decided to rally behind a new guy - Marco. He looks like a nice guy. I used to think he's a nice guy, but he's a guy who looks like the perfect candidate for a Good Humor ice cream ad. In the days since the last debate, he's been routinely embarrassing himself, showing that he has the temperament of a petulant four-year old. His donors, no doubt the same people who are staring at the ideological tree trunk, pushed him to attack the front runner. Well, guess what? Those attacks make him look and sound like a spoiled brat.
He's ridiculing the Alpha candidate. He's not attacking the Alpha candidate's platform or policies. He's talking about physical aspects and the spray-on tan. It's embarrassing to have this man running around saying he wants to be president.
As rough-around-the-edges as the Alpha male in this fight might be, at least he has the capacity to act like a reasonable adult. He showed that in South Carolina and on Super Tuesday when he held press conferences. Not only did he act like a reasonable adult, even detractors in the media said he looked and sounded presidential.
Still, these arrogant ideologues are foisting their choice on America through well-funded Super PACs.
Rubio's super PAC is Conservative Solutions led by J. Warren Tompkins. He and his buddy Chris Mottola brought us two versions of the Bush family, ending with Hank Paulson and the economic debacle of the mid-2000s. Thanks a lot, guys.
Then they offered up the milquetoast of John McCain for president in 2008, against Barack Obama. That was an embarrassment. Whatever fire McCain once had has been sublimated by immersion in the Washington cesspit.
And now they're working hard to undermine Trump's candidacy so they can bring us more of the same.
The super PACs are out there spreading outright lies and half-truths - like the one about Trump banning disabled vets from Trump Tower. Not true, folks.
Trump asked the city to move street vendors, some of whom had disabled vet permits, from the sidewalk in front of his property. Instead, the ad makes it sound as if Trump barred the doors and prevented disabled vets from the building itself.
There are other lies, but the volume of the hate-filled ads shows the desperation of the Right-wing establishment. Now they're trotting Mitt Romney out of the closet to blast Trump in another hate-filled dissertation. To me, it looks like desperation.
What's astonishing to me, and to others who are paying attention to this, is that these self-righteous arrogant bloated egos don't see what they're doing.
The American people are the ones who are called out in the Founding documents. We The People, as I've said before, isn't just an idea or words on a piece of parchment. It's bigger than an idea - it's an ideal, and it's what the Founders promised: a government of, for and by the people.
Rich Lowry, George Will, Erick Erickson and all the other arrogant pinheads give lip service to the Founders but their actions shout that it isn't about the Founders or the dream the Founders had for a United States of America. Instead, it's all and only about them, about power.
As I see it, one of three things can come of this:
1) The Republican party will shatter like a mirror dropped from the top floor of Trump Tower. It will break along factional lines - The People who support Trump and those who don't.
Rich Lowry & Co., and by that it's all inclusive of everyone who is bucking what the people want for themselves, will hold their control of our government. They will put a person into the White House who is a puppet - an empty suit, just as George Bush I and George Bush II were empty suits and just as Barack Obama is an empty suit, owned by George Soros, Warren Buffet and the left.
2) The American people will rise up and push Trump into the White House. The Republican Establishment will have apoplexy and implode (God! Do I hope that happens!!!). We'll have four years of a real representative democracy - as the Founders intended.
If that first four years is successful - if Trump does at least some of what he's said he'll do - we could get eight years and a lot of forward movement toward what this country should be but isn't because of policies pushed and enacted through puppetry.
3) Rich Lowry & Co. will, by virtue of their resistance, turn off the people they need to get a right-wing candidate into the White House and we'll end up with at least four-years of George Soros and Warren Buffet fronted by Hilliary Clinton.
I'll say it right here and right now: If Trump is not the nominee of the Republican party come summer, I will not vote in November. There won't be any point in voting in November and I am genuinely willing to wager my life that a lot of other people will feel the same and will stay home, giving the left a de facto win because I will NOT vote for someone I don't believe in.
If Rich Lowry & Co. want to destroy the United States of America, they are on the right path. They are doing a fine job of it with Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush and the other sock puppets.
I believe in Donald Trump. I do not think he's perfect. I do not think he's as self-serving as he's being made out. I do think that he's honest and that he does want to make America Great again.
For what it's worth, that's my take on it this morning.
Have a wonderful day.
Best~
Philippa
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories
Wednesday, February 24, 2016
Brainiacs in a Vacuum
That's what they sound like if you read the bitching, moaning and whining about Donald Trump from the so-called 'pundits' in Washington about the current election cycle.
Bill Kristol hates him. George Will hates him. Erick Erickson hates him. And the list goes on - boring in its sameness.
These people say to the rest of us 'we are the Conservatives and you should listen to us.'
I want to know, 'who died and appointed you God?'
These people say 'Donald Trump is not a Conservative because...' Pick your reason (it's all crap by the way).
I demand to know, 'who died and appointed you sole arbiter of what makes a Conservative'?
Is it any wonder the American people are disgusted with Washington?
These 'insiders', and others like them who have written for the National Review, the Weekly Standard and all of the other inside the Washington Beltway political rags, are so brain dead that they don't see the writing on the wall. They have sucked all of the oxygen out of their rarefied little enclave. They are in the last stages of intellectual asphyxiation and don't even recognize the symptoms.
Symptom 1: Iowa. Even Ted Cruz talking about eliminating corn subsidies and the ethanol mandate won the state. Republicans had higher voter turn-out there than the Democrats (180,000 to 171,109, respectively). Cruz was first and Trump was a solid second.
Symptom 2: New Hampshire. Donald Trump blew out the "palatable" candidates - Kasich, Rubio and Bush.
Symptom 3: South Carolina. Donald Trump won forty-four of forty-six counties. The "homeboy" Jeb! got next to zero support despite being the "Establishment" darling and the one candidate these inside the beltway Zombies thought was going to win everything.
Symptom 4: Entrance polling from Nevada. The electoral - the sheeple - are pissed off, fed up, disgusted, angry, you name it. They cast their ballots yesterday and Trump walked away with a twenty point lead over the second place finisher, Marco Rubio.
We, the American people, are shouting at the Washington Zombies: we do not want you to tell us who we should vote for. We are not children. We can and do think for ourselves and we do not want politics as usual.
So now, what do you suppose these brainiacs are saying? They want a third party. They won't support the Republican nominee chosen by the People.
What does this say about them, about their character, their belief in the Founding Principles and Documents - the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights they have purported to support and hold dear all these years? How about:
That, right there is what it says. They are empty suits. They have no honesty. They have no integrity. They have no values. They have no character. They have and they are nothing.
If they don't get their way, if they don't agree with what the citizens of this country want in place of what we're told to want, they act like spoiled babies. They'll pick up their marbles and go elsewhere.
Well, I've got news for them. They don't drive this country as much as they like to think they do. Neither does the donor class of which they are fringe members.
We the People is far more than just words on a piece of parchment. It is an idea and an ideal, and it is coming home to roost.
We the People are fed up - utterly and completely - with the crap and nonsense flowing out of Washington. We have put up with it for thirty years, since Ronald Reagan, and we are done.
We the People did not want Obamacare - but it was shoved down our unwilling throats by the Washington Elites and by Congress. This is payback.
We the People do not like the lies and cover-ups and constant scandals that flow through Washington DC like a river of sewage. This is payback.
Although we're supposed to be 'tired' of hearing about Benghazi, I can tell you I'm not. I don't think many others in this country are, either. I think we know precisely what was done.
Hilliary Clinton and her boss got in over their heads with Libya. When the shit hit the fan they didn't have the first clue what to do and didn't have the brains God gave a chicken to figure it out. They left people to die even though there were others there in country, on the ground and willing to risk it all to save those in the embassy.
When it was all over, with four men dead and others badly wounded, they circulated through the morning shows and pumped up a lie about a stupid video. For days they passed that around, hoping we the people would be just as stupid as they are. But we weren't. We demanded answers so Congress held hearings. In those, the left stonewalled and whitewashed and covered up, just as they always do and the right caved, just as it always does.
Nothing happened, and that pisses me and a lot of other people off. This is payback.
Now we've got the e-mail server mess. Most of the country is paying attention, praying for an indictment or at least a series of subpoenas to move the investigation forward, but it's being stonewalled again.
Trump has said that he will go after Hilliary big time if he's elected. This is payback.
What is going to be sweet music to me and to others who think like me is Trump going after Hilliary. He will be unrelenting, and she will go down in flames because it will all come out.
Comey will wait. Honestly, I think that is why the FBI seems to be dragging its feet. They have enough to pin her to the wall for the rest of her life. I know they do - just based on what's been talked about in the media. But he won't request an indictment. Not yet, because if no crime has been named, if Hilliary doesn't stand formally accused of anything, Obie-One has no grounds for a pardon. She'll be vulnerable - a sitting duck and it is going to be a beautiful day in America when that lights up.
So Bill and Erick and George and all the rest, get over yourselves. You are not at all important or even that interesting out here.
Have a lovely day out in the hinterlands - it's where the real people live.
Best~
Philippa
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories
Bill Kristol hates him. George Will hates him. Erick Erickson hates him. And the list goes on - boring in its sameness.
These people say to the rest of us 'we are the Conservatives and you should listen to us.'
I want to know, 'who died and appointed you God?'
These people say 'Donald Trump is not a Conservative because...' Pick your reason (it's all crap by the way).
I demand to know, 'who died and appointed you sole arbiter of what makes a Conservative'?
Is it any wonder the American people are disgusted with Washington?
These 'insiders', and others like them who have written for the National Review, the Weekly Standard and all of the other inside the Washington Beltway political rags, are so brain dead that they don't see the writing on the wall. They have sucked all of the oxygen out of their rarefied little enclave. They are in the last stages of intellectual asphyxiation and don't even recognize the symptoms.
Symptom 1: Iowa. Even Ted Cruz talking about eliminating corn subsidies and the ethanol mandate won the state. Republicans had higher voter turn-out there than the Democrats (180,000 to 171,109, respectively). Cruz was first and Trump was a solid second.
Symptom 2: New Hampshire. Donald Trump blew out the "palatable" candidates - Kasich, Rubio and Bush.
Symptom 3: South Carolina. Donald Trump won forty-four of forty-six counties. The "homeboy" Jeb! got next to zero support despite being the "Establishment" darling and the one candidate these inside the beltway Zombies thought was going to win everything.
Symptom 4: Entrance polling from Nevada. The electoral - the sheeple - are pissed off, fed up, disgusted, angry, you name it. They cast their ballots yesterday and Trump walked away with a twenty point lead over the second place finisher, Marco Rubio.
We, the American people, are shouting at the Washington Zombies: we do not want you to tell us who we should vote for. We are not children. We can and do think for ourselves and we do not want politics as usual.
So now, what do you suppose these brainiacs are saying? They want a third party. They won't support the Republican nominee chosen by the People.
What does this say about them, about their character, their belief in the Founding Principles and Documents - the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights they have purported to support and hold dear all these years? How about:
That, right there is what it says. They are empty suits. They have no honesty. They have no integrity. They have no values. They have no character. They have and they are nothing.
If they don't get their way, if they don't agree with what the citizens of this country want in place of what we're told to want, they act like spoiled babies. They'll pick up their marbles and go elsewhere.
Well, I've got news for them. They don't drive this country as much as they like to think they do. Neither does the donor class of which they are fringe members.
We the People is far more than just words on a piece of parchment. It is an idea and an ideal, and it is coming home to roost.
We the People are fed up - utterly and completely - with the crap and nonsense flowing out of Washington. We have put up with it for thirty years, since Ronald Reagan, and we are done.
We the People did not want Obamacare - but it was shoved down our unwilling throats by the Washington Elites and by Congress. This is payback.
We the People do not like the lies and cover-ups and constant scandals that flow through Washington DC like a river of sewage. This is payback.
Although we're supposed to be 'tired' of hearing about Benghazi, I can tell you I'm not. I don't think many others in this country are, either. I think we know precisely what was done.
Hilliary Clinton and her boss got in over their heads with Libya. When the shit hit the fan they didn't have the first clue what to do and didn't have the brains God gave a chicken to figure it out. They left people to die even though there were others there in country, on the ground and willing to risk it all to save those in the embassy.
When it was all over, with four men dead and others badly wounded, they circulated through the morning shows and pumped up a lie about a stupid video. For days they passed that around, hoping we the people would be just as stupid as they are. But we weren't. We demanded answers so Congress held hearings. In those, the left stonewalled and whitewashed and covered up, just as they always do and the right caved, just as it always does.
Nothing happened, and that pisses me and a lot of other people off. This is payback.
Now we've got the e-mail server mess. Most of the country is paying attention, praying for an indictment or at least a series of subpoenas to move the investigation forward, but it's being stonewalled again.
Trump has said that he will go after Hilliary big time if he's elected. This is payback.
What is going to be sweet music to me and to others who think like me is Trump going after Hilliary. He will be unrelenting, and she will go down in flames because it will all come out.
Comey will wait. Honestly, I think that is why the FBI seems to be dragging its feet. They have enough to pin her to the wall for the rest of her life. I know they do - just based on what's been talked about in the media. But he won't request an indictment. Not yet, because if no crime has been named, if Hilliary doesn't stand formally accused of anything, Obie-One has no grounds for a pardon. She'll be vulnerable - a sitting duck and it is going to be a beautiful day in America when that lights up.
So Bill and Erick and George and all the rest, get over yourselves. You are not at all important or even that interesting out here.
Have a lovely day out in the hinterlands - it's where the real people live.
Best~
Philippa
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories
Saturday, February 20, 2016
What a Week!
This has been quite the week around here. It's not that I haven't had time to sit down and write, it's just that I haven't had a block of time, which is what this requires. Starting and stopping and starting and stopping makes it harder to keep the train of thought from derailing, and ideas kept popping in and out. It was a mess. Now, however, I have some time and will take advantage of it.
The new job responsibilities are settling in, but it's still huge. I have a boatload of stuff to work through, but with help and cooperation I'm at least not falling too much farther behind. I don't know that I'm gaining, either, but looking at what it was and what it is, I feel pretty good.
I got the paper mess sorted out (literally). Then I took the items that I had cleared out - about one-half a Banker's file storage box full - sorted out (literally), and have started sending these things off to the people who have to say 'yay' or 'nay' on clearing them out of the system. I've gotten most back, although there are a couple of batches still hanging. I'll send another reminder on Monday, and then pick up the phone.
The problem is, if I don't get responses to these, the pile will just keep getting bigger and it already is. I picked up two big batches on Thursday and Friday, and weaned through that. Low-hanging fruit is gone, so I have to start chipping away at the rock.
Along with this new stuff is the stuff that I was doing - I still have to keep on top of that, so it's a double-challenge because neither is hard but both are time consuming, which means I don't have as much time or energy for other things as I would like.
In politics, one of the best laughs I had this week was seeing Hilliary barking like a dog at one of her events. If she was Howard Dean, with the scream which sank his candidacy a few years ago, she'd be gone by now. But she's not. She's Hilliary - the Anointed One by the DNC and the donors. Although this is getting interesting what with the FBI investigation and some now saying she should step down while the investigation is underway. Yeah. That has a snowball's chance.
Whatever. So she's barking like a dog at a rally and someone picks up on that and does a musical remix, which is funnier than Hades - even if I liked Hilliary it would be funny.
'Who Let The Dogs Out' featuring Hilliary Clinton
Quite presidential, wasn't it? Imagine if that had been any of the GOP candidates - Donald Trump or Ted Cruz. The press would be on constant replay for days. But, no. Hilliary, as always, gets a pass. Nonetheless, it is funny.
And Obie-One, surprise, surprise, surprise, took a pass on Scalia's funeral. He couldn't be arsed to spend an hour or so looking appropriately glum so, to avoid trying to hide that disgusting smile of glee, I suspect he probably hit the golf course. Assuming it wasn't raining. Although, if it was raining in Washington DC, he probably ordered up Air Force One, damn the carbon footprint, and flew to somewhere where it isn't raining so he could put in a round or two before heading to Cuba next week.
Politics as usual, in other words.
In a completely different part of the world, I promised myself that I was going to take a walk on Tuesday. I had wanted to go out on Monday but other life things intervened. So I did walk on Tuesday and I did something I've wanted to do for a while. I took pictures - not photographic quality, just snaps - of some of the architecture in Calistoga.
The term 'eclectic' is somewhat overused in this day and age. Pick up any home decorating magazine and there it is. However, nothing describes the architecture of Calistoga like 'eclectic'. There are craftsman 'cottages', shotgun architecture, French Provincial, California Victorians and mixed up little places that don't really fit any particular style. I did go online to see if I could find any information about some of these buildings, particularly the older ones - 1888 and 1890 - but found nada. Still, they are beautiful.
Here's just a sample, and I apologize for not showing street scenes but even in February Calistoga is packed with tourists. If you want to see tourists, look at pictures of Disneyland. So I didn't take pictures of the tourists, just the bits and pieces of the buildings - the details of them - that interest me.
If you look through the branches in the picture above, you can see 1890 etched into the stone. The building looks like it might have been a bank, once upon a time.
The dark lines on the trim in the picture above are carved, not painted. If the sun were slightly lower, the light would shine through. From inside, I think it would be captivating to see the sunlight through those little embellishments. And across and down this street is this pretty little cottage with its gingerbread trim:
Along with all the other styles, there's this little Greek Orthodox church. It's not as grand as Saint Olga's in Santa Rosa, but it's humble and homey and cute.
And, just for fun, I took a picture of a little fur-baby (s/he and the family were out all over the place, but this is the only one who stopped long enough for me to get a portrait):
And, along the way, I saw these:
So that was my lovely Tuesday and then, Wednesday through yesterday, it was cold, blustery and rainy making Tuesday better than it was.
Wishing you a lovely weekend!
Best~
Philippa
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories
The new job responsibilities are settling in, but it's still huge. I have a boatload of stuff to work through, but with help and cooperation I'm at least not falling too much farther behind. I don't know that I'm gaining, either, but looking at what it was and what it is, I feel pretty good.
I got the paper mess sorted out (literally). Then I took the items that I had cleared out - about one-half a Banker's file storage box full - sorted out (literally), and have started sending these things off to the people who have to say 'yay' or 'nay' on clearing them out of the system. I've gotten most back, although there are a couple of batches still hanging. I'll send another reminder on Monday, and then pick up the phone.
The problem is, if I don't get responses to these, the pile will just keep getting bigger and it already is. I picked up two big batches on Thursday and Friday, and weaned through that. Low-hanging fruit is gone, so I have to start chipping away at the rock.
Along with this new stuff is the stuff that I was doing - I still have to keep on top of that, so it's a double-challenge because neither is hard but both are time consuming, which means I don't have as much time or energy for other things as I would like.
In politics, one of the best laughs I had this week was seeing Hilliary barking like a dog at one of her events. If she was Howard Dean, with the scream which sank his candidacy a few years ago, she'd be gone by now. But she's not. She's Hilliary - the Anointed One by the DNC and the donors. Although this is getting interesting what with the FBI investigation and some now saying she should step down while the investigation is underway. Yeah. That has a snowball's chance.
Whatever. So she's barking like a dog at a rally and someone picks up on that and does a musical remix, which is funnier than Hades - even if I liked Hilliary it would be funny.
'Who Let The Dogs Out' featuring Hilliary Clinton
Quite presidential, wasn't it? Imagine if that had been any of the GOP candidates - Donald Trump or Ted Cruz. The press would be on constant replay for days. But, no. Hilliary, as always, gets a pass. Nonetheless, it is funny.
And Obie-One, surprise, surprise, surprise, took a pass on Scalia's funeral. He couldn't be arsed to spend an hour or so looking appropriately glum so, to avoid trying to hide that disgusting smile of glee, I suspect he probably hit the golf course. Assuming it wasn't raining. Although, if it was raining in Washington DC, he probably ordered up Air Force One, damn the carbon footprint, and flew to somewhere where it isn't raining so he could put in a round or two before heading to Cuba next week.
Politics as usual, in other words.
In a completely different part of the world, I promised myself that I was going to take a walk on Tuesday. I had wanted to go out on Monday but other life things intervened. So I did walk on Tuesday and I did something I've wanted to do for a while. I took pictures - not photographic quality, just snaps - of some of the architecture in Calistoga.
The term 'eclectic' is somewhat overused in this day and age. Pick up any home decorating magazine and there it is. However, nothing describes the architecture of Calistoga like 'eclectic'. There are craftsman 'cottages', shotgun architecture, French Provincial, California Victorians and mixed up little places that don't really fit any particular style. I did go online to see if I could find any information about some of these buildings, particularly the older ones - 1888 and 1890 - but found nada. Still, they are beautiful.
Here's just a sample, and I apologize for not showing street scenes but even in February Calistoga is packed with tourists. If you want to see tourists, look at pictures of Disneyland. So I didn't take pictures of the tourists, just the bits and pieces of the buildings - the details of them - that interest me.
The dark lines on the trim in the picture above are carved, not painted. If the sun were slightly lower, the light would shine through. From inside, I think it would be captivating to see the sunlight through those little embellishments. And across and down this street is this pretty little cottage with its gingerbread trim:
Along with all the other styles, there's this little Greek Orthodox church. It's not as grand as Saint Olga's in Santa Rosa, but it's humble and homey and cute.
And, along the way, I saw these:
So that was my lovely Tuesday and then, Wednesday through yesterday, it was cold, blustery and rainy making Tuesday better than it was.
Wishing you a lovely weekend!
Best~
Philippa
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories
Saturday, February 13, 2016
What's Coming Next?
There is a lot going on in this world.
North Korea, Russia, Syria, Africa - bad things are happening all over the place, but America is looking inward again, paying attention to the political circus playing out while the rest of the world falls apart.
As for the election, it will be interesting to see if 'nice guys finish last' is true, or if it's not.
For instance, I can't help but wonder how long it'll be before the Election Mortician shows up for Jeb! His campaign is fascinating from the standpoint of how badly it's being managed, yet he insists he's serious. His Super PAC, funded by the elites who want him to win, is throwing tens of millions of dollars away in advertising that is not doing a thing to move the needle on the dial. That's telling.
Instead of playing off his last name, it appears that Jeb! is attempting to distance himself from his family by not appending 'Bush' to his candidacy. Of course, that family name comes with a lot of baggage.
In 1989, Daddy said, 'read my lips, no new taxes' and, almost as soon as he was elected, raised the taxes he promised not to touch.
Big Bro launched the ever unpopular war in Iraq. For some of us there is still the WMD question. Most people dismiss that as a false flag, an excuse, but some of us, deeper thinkers perhaps, don't.
What the No War for Oil crowd will not acknowledge is that IF the intel showed that Hussein did have WMDs we might well have been right to invade. After all, Hussein had already used chemical agents on the Kurds in the north part of the country. That was well documented. There are pictures of women and children lying dead in the streets and that showed he was not reluctant to kill thousands of people using chemical weapons.
What if we hadn't invaded Iraq and what if Hussein had launched a chemical or biological attack against Europe or America because we didn't invade and he perceived us as weak and ineffectual? Then what? Still, nothing happened and no WMDs were found so the naysayers were and are right to say nay.
Then there's the little matter of the economic implosion at the end of Big Bro's presidency. He and Paulson devised a scheme to bankrupt our country, and it's working even now. Debt is through the roof, government has greater reach into our private lives, and we are tiptoeing along the edge of an economic abyss - barely keeping from falling off the edge.
So Jeb! comes into the race with that family baggage.
On top of that, whenever I see Jeb! on the news, he always looks like the put-upon pouty little brother. From the expression on his face - something that resembles hurt surprise or desperation - to the slump in his shoulders and slight slouch in his back, he does not look excited, happy or vibrant. Poor Jeb! I don't think his heart is in this. He's doing it because the friends and backers of Daddy and Big Bro are pushing him into it.
No matter what he wants, though. The Koch brothers and the rest of the right-wing political elites are pushing him, and they're pushing his family. Why else are Barbara and George out there? What kind of desperation cry is that when you drag mommy and daddy out of their dotage closet to boost your ratings? That is more than desperate. It's pathetic.
Come on, Jeb! Your parents are in their nineties. Don't you think they have something better to do? I'm sure they do, but this is ugly old political debt coming home to roost. The puppet masters propelled Bush I into the White House and made sure Bush II got there, too (remember Florida with its hanging chads?). Now they've called and the Bush family will perform because the elites do not want a change to status quo and Jeb! would make the perfect puppet. No spine, no gumption and, as far as I can see, little brains and capacity to think for himself. The perfect front man.
Elsewhere, it seems Russia is playing both sides against the middle in Syria. Putin and his generals are propping up Assad and helping ISIS against the Kurds and who the hell cares who's caught in the middle. Putin and Assad certainly don't, and no one in ISIS has a shred of humanity - they are straight vermin across the board.
For now, it's the Syrian people who are bearing the brunt of the horror. They're caught between two forces that are fighting for control of the territory. Unless something is done, the massacre will continue but we aren't supposed to get involved because it's not our fight.
So what does the left propose? Should we just go ahead and bring all and sundry, anyone who asks, into the US and Europe? I don't want to do that. Not because I don't have a heart, but because I do have a head. How easy would it be for ISIS to infiltrate the refugees? Out of 10,000 people if you have just one dozen - twelve bad actors - how much damage could they do here or in Europe?
Show up at an embassy looking like a poor, downtrodden victim. Beg for entrance for yourself and your family and be given a pass with nary a background check, questionnaire or cursory inspection. That's how Obie-One and John Kerry and the rest of the rat pack in Washington want it because it looks so nice, so kind.
Never mind that the wannabe immigrant is holding the design for an attack under his robes. Knowing that we're leery of lone 'strong young men', ISIS has probably already adapted. While the vast majority of Syrian family men really are family men, they will probably use the skirts of willing women, or unwilling women to whom they're married and with whom they have children, and sucker us. Just a few getting into the country and connecting up with sympathizers here could do huge amounts of damage. Hide in the shelter of a woman's burqa with a passel of kids, beg for entrance and... And these vermin have no compunction about hiding in the skirts of their women. That's why they've surrounded themselves with women and children in Syria.
What needs to happen, but won't because Obie-One has none between his legs and Herman Munster (aka John Kerry) has nothing between his ears, is we need to refuse these people. Or we need to bring them in and set them up in those remote REX-84 camps Reagan built. Use them as the modern Ellis Island where these refugees stay until they're thoroughly vetted and can be released into society with better than reasonable assurance that they're 'safe'.
But, in the meantime, Putin and Assad and ISIS have free reign across Syria. That contagion will spread with flareups and outbreaks here and in Europe. It's already pushing into Turkey and, within six months if something doesn't give, Turkey is going to be at serious risk.
In the past few days Homeland Security has warned, again, that ISIS has infiltrated the refugees accepted into Europe and the US. That's about 100% certain, and ISIS is declaring it will bring its war here, to the US, this year. They are here and, because of political correctness - which prevented neighbors from reporting what they saw in the weeks leading up to the San Bernardino shooting - no one is going to report anything that looks peculiar. God forbid we should profile someone because they look, dress, speak and worship a certain way! No! Let's let 'em build their arsenal, do their training and kill dozens or hundreds or thousands of innocents. Too bad they missed the Super Bowl, but there's always the World Series, the political conventions, the Olympics and a bunch of other places full of soft targets.
Needless to say, while I'm not cowering in my bunker, neither am I going to places that are full of crowds. I'm going about my life and living in my part of the world - away from city centers and masses of people - and keeping my head up, my eyes open and my powder dry.
In economics, the Treasury is still fighting to shore up the stock market but it looks like they might be losing the battle. China's Shanghai Index and Japan's Nikkei aren't helping. No matter now hard governments try, they just cannot keep propping up the paper market because there really is no there, there. It's an empty void inside that bubble and that bubble is reaching near critical mass.
International shipping - the Baltic Dry Index - keeps falling.
The US equity markets have been down more than they've been up this year.
OPEC is flooding the market with oil, driving the price of oil down until American companies, fighting the costs of regulation and taxation, can't manage or compete. Chevron is laying of thousands of people in an attempt to cut costs.
What happens if our country's oil and gas companies go belly up? Betcha anything the left will first cheer and then, when the reality of what they've been calling for hits home, cry, 'wait a minute!' But it will be too late. An entire industry will have been destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of people from Chevron and Exxon and their supporting industries will be unemployed and gas prices will be up at $10 or more per gallon because we have to import and there are no domestic producers or refiners.
What these limousine liberals don't get because they have no capacity for rational thought is how the higher prices of gas and oil will impact those people whom they say they care about. How will the working poor who require their cars for transportation manage to pay for the gas they need to get to work? If it costs $10 per gallon and these people are making just minimum wage or a little more, that's a hefty amount of money for them - $100 to fill their tank with ten gallons of gas. Oh! Of course! We'll look to government to help us. We'll ask for subsidies. We'll just add that to the national debt and we'll get the one percent to pay for it.
The US dollar is falling again, despite the Treasury's attempts at manipulation.
What's most worrying is that the US Treasury bills - what used to be one of the safest of the safe investments - has dipped to lows not seen since 2012 and the only reason it's not lower is because the government keeps buying its own paper, making it look better than it is. That's a problem because a) those are the notes the US tries to sell around the world to get money in here so we can keep propping; b) with no one wanting them, which is part of the reason they're falling, it's only going to get worse.
I expect that within the next eighteen to twenty-four months, certainly by 2020, our debt is going to come home to roost in a big way.
If Trump gets in, and if he can effectively negotiate with Congress to undo some of the damage that's been done in the past thirty years, we might push the inevitable back by a few years. If Sanders or Clinton gets in and starts messing around with their Socialist agenda - free things for everyone and damn the cost! - we'll be hosed in short order.
First, our markets will crash and burn because no one is going to want to invest here. We will no longer be seen as the 'safe haven'. Then, our currency will go the way of the Zimbabwe dollar. No one, not even a village idiot, will believe in the 'full faith and credit of the United States' because there will be none. Our dollar will have no value, no perceived intrinsic value anywhere else but here. And, yes, the following image of a one hundred trillion dollar note is real. You can read about Zimbabwe's meltdown here: http://www.cato.org/zimbabwe
Imagine living in a country where the daily inflation rate is at virtually 100%. You go to the store on Monday and the loaf of bread is $2.00. On Tuesday it's $4.00. By Friday - in just five days - that same loaf of bread costs $64 dollars! And we are in far worse position than Zimbabwe. As a country, as an economy, Zimbabwe was nothing compared to the United States.
When we go, it is going to be unbelievable - and it will take down the rest of the world. After the first shock, which will hit like an earthquake and then continue with aftershocks, it will take probably take between six and ten months to start showing signs of settling, but it's going to be devastating and it is something that will take not years but at least a generation from which to recover.
At that point, no one is going to want US dollars - which is something that Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa (BRICS) have been praying for. OPEC wouldn't mind, either, since they don't like the US all that much. If economically important countries around the world peg their currencies and their trade to another currency, the US will not just be hamstrung, it will be economically crippled.
After things start to recover and get back on track, the United States, because of the monetary manipulation of its government, our enormous debt load and the instant fall from Goliath to gnat, will never be a world player again in our lifetimes. We will be that third world country - the 'has been' over which everyone else shakes their heads, points and says, 'see, pride does go before the fall.'
Chickens coming home to roost and what I predicted in broad terms back in 2007 before Obie-One got the nomination and won the Presidency. Then I said that by 2014 or 2015 our economy would be in a shambles and the Dow would be down around 7,500. I didn't foresee the Treasury and Fed intervention with POMO, so I was wrong about that, but look at the rest of it:
We have nearly doubled our national debt in the past fifteen years. This is debt that we, our children, our children's children and their children's children will never be able to repay. We just passed $19T in debt, without including the entitlements of Social Security and Medicare. Those push our total debt - what we owe to all and sundry - upwards of $64 trillion. That debt is continuing to increase, exponentially, by the second.
Following the Great Recession from 2007 through 2012, the "regular" work week went from forty hours per week to just thirty, meaning that full-time work is no longer full-time. In this scenario, a worker is earning less money per hour and working fewer hours. A $20 per hour worker in a forty hour week would earn $800 per week. In the new paradigm of thirty hours, their real wages are down $200 per week to just $600. No wonder so many people now require government assistance to live!
Aside from wage pressure, unemployment is not as rosy as the Bureau of Labor Statistics and government would like us to believe. Real unemployment is still around 10% but after the BLS manipulates the data, adding in casual workers - people who can't find regular work but are sometimes employed - and temporary workers, along with made up numbers of people it "thinks" are working and pulling numbers out of the air for "kitchen table entrepreneurs", they're able to adjust the unemployment rate to about 5%. Which, in any other scenario, is good. However, the fact that they have to make things up as they go to get it there doesn't tell the whole story.
Supporting my statement above, this is from Gallup's Daily snapshot taken just yesterday morning:
For example, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) does not count a person who desires work as unemployed if he or she is not working and has stopped looking for work over the past four weeks. Similarly, the BLS does not count someone as unemployed if he or she is, for instance, an out-of-work engineer, construction worker or retail manager who performs a minimum of one hour of work a week and receives at least $20 in compensation.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/187589/bls-unemployment-seasonally-adjusted.aspx
So if you want to work but have given up looking through frustration, you're employed.
If you work for just one $20 hour per week, you're employed.
Real wages are down significantly. The number of under-employed, those people with strong training and skills who cannot find work in their field, is huge: 14%.
'Good jobs', those defined as regular work for thirty-plus hours per week, are at 44.7%, down from 45.3% in December and 44.9% in November. This data is also available from the link above.
The Fed is already manipulating the stock market. They are already determining our growth by trying zero interest rates to make our debt burden a bit less intolerable, but that's not working. Investment still hasn't moved because who wants to invest and get no return? Now they're talking, seriously, about negative interest rates.
Instead of putting your money into an account or a fund and getting a return, you get to park your money there and pay for the privilege. This is one reason the government is pushing us away from a cash trade system.
If we no longer have cash, if everything is done by electronic transfer through debit and credit cards and cash transactions go the way of the dinosaur, they will have us by the economic short-ones and can pull as long and as hard as they like. If your money, your labor as represented by money, is in their hands who has control of it? Take a 401k as an example.
If you're in a 401k you're already paying an administrative fee. You put the money in but you cannot touch it until you reach age 59.5. If you do before then, you're penalized except in certain situations and in those you have to repay that money within a set time period.
In the past few years there have been serious steps taken in government designed to take your 401k funds so they can be passed out to people who haven't saved. The 401k annuity program is a first step.
They say you're guaranteed a return but the plan is to turn that into a redistribution of your wealth.
http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2012/12/how-government-is-coming-after-your-ira.html
The linked article is from 2012 and is darker than the more recent articles because the Fed and the Department of Labor have already instituted this scheme. Ultimately, they are planning to reduce your annuity payment to somewhere in the range of 3% per year. That means that for every $1,000 you have saved, you would get an annual payout of just $30, or a whopping $2.50 per month. The rest would be distributed to people who didn't save. How do you like that idea? Your money, the money you worked hard to earn and save, wouldn't be yours anymore. It would belong to someone else because government says so.
That's one of the reasons government wants to do away with cash transactions. You can put your credit card away in a safe or under a mattress, but that's only a representation of your buying power. If your money is kept in digits on a computer someplace, the government can take it, just by the push of a button.
Nine years ago I projected that by 2017 the standard of living in the United States of America will look like Senegal on a good day. We're just about there, the window might be a little bigger than I said back then, but I do think the timbers under this massive mess are starting to crack and shift. It's just a matter of time until it all collapses around our ears.
What's really pathetic are the paper-gold investors. Those people who have invested in gold 'funds' and think they have some sort of security because they 'own' gold. In fact, all they own is a piece of paper.
Going back to my analogy of a tree (gold) and sawdust, you cannot parse a single ounce of gold ten thousand people each think they own into ten thousand ounces of gold. It is just one ounce divided by ten thousand. And that is precisely what investors in EFT gold funds are: the equivalent of sawdust. When the spit hits the fan and those people run to their broker demanding settlement, it isn't going to be there. They will be offered paper currency in exchange, and that is going to be worthless in the scenario I see coming.
But, no worries. The way Pyong Yang is going, and the US is doing nothing to stop, we'll have a nuclear weapon detonating somewhere over US territory in another year or so and that'll solve some problems. Not the currencies and economics, but it will certainly draw our attention away from the fact that no one is working, we're all freezing and starving and the money we have in our pockets is more useful for keeping warm than it is for buying things.
Now, after all of that, look out the window, take a deep breath and appreciate what you have, and have a wonderful day.
Best~
Philippa
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories
North Korea, Russia, Syria, Africa - bad things are happening all over the place, but America is looking inward again, paying attention to the political circus playing out while the rest of the world falls apart.
As for the election, it will be interesting to see if 'nice guys finish last' is true, or if it's not.
For instance, I can't help but wonder how long it'll be before the Election Mortician shows up for Jeb! His campaign is fascinating from the standpoint of how badly it's being managed, yet he insists he's serious. His Super PAC, funded by the elites who want him to win, is throwing tens of millions of dollars away in advertising that is not doing a thing to move the needle on the dial. That's telling.
Instead of playing off his last name, it appears that Jeb! is attempting to distance himself from his family by not appending 'Bush' to his candidacy. Of course, that family name comes with a lot of baggage.
In 1989, Daddy said, 'read my lips, no new taxes' and, almost as soon as he was elected, raised the taxes he promised not to touch.
Big Bro launched the ever unpopular war in Iraq. For some of us there is still the WMD question. Most people dismiss that as a false flag, an excuse, but some of us, deeper thinkers perhaps, don't.
What the No War for Oil crowd will not acknowledge is that IF the intel showed that Hussein did have WMDs we might well have been right to invade. After all, Hussein had already used chemical agents on the Kurds in the north part of the country. That was well documented. There are pictures of women and children lying dead in the streets and that showed he was not reluctant to kill thousands of people using chemical weapons.
What if we hadn't invaded Iraq and what if Hussein had launched a chemical or biological attack against Europe or America because we didn't invade and he perceived us as weak and ineffectual? Then what? Still, nothing happened and no WMDs were found so the naysayers were and are right to say nay.
Then there's the little matter of the economic implosion at the end of Big Bro's presidency. He and Paulson devised a scheme to bankrupt our country, and it's working even now. Debt is through the roof, government has greater reach into our private lives, and we are tiptoeing along the edge of an economic abyss - barely keeping from falling off the edge.
So Jeb! comes into the race with that family baggage.
On top of that, whenever I see Jeb! on the news, he always looks like the put-upon pouty little brother. From the expression on his face - something that resembles hurt surprise or desperation - to the slump in his shoulders and slight slouch in his back, he does not look excited, happy or vibrant. Poor Jeb! I don't think his heart is in this. He's doing it because the friends and backers of Daddy and Big Bro are pushing him into it.
No matter what he wants, though. The Koch brothers and the rest of the right-wing political elites are pushing him, and they're pushing his family. Why else are Barbara and George out there? What kind of desperation cry is that when you drag mommy and daddy out of their dotage closet to boost your ratings? That is more than desperate. It's pathetic.
Come on, Jeb! Your parents are in their nineties. Don't you think they have something better to do? I'm sure they do, but this is ugly old political debt coming home to roost. The puppet masters propelled Bush I into the White House and made sure Bush II got there, too (remember Florida with its hanging chads?). Now they've called and the Bush family will perform because the elites do not want a change to status quo and Jeb! would make the perfect puppet. No spine, no gumption and, as far as I can see, little brains and capacity to think for himself. The perfect front man.
Elsewhere, it seems Russia is playing both sides against the middle in Syria. Putin and his generals are propping up Assad and helping ISIS against the Kurds and who the hell cares who's caught in the middle. Putin and Assad certainly don't, and no one in ISIS has a shred of humanity - they are straight vermin across the board.
For now, it's the Syrian people who are bearing the brunt of the horror. They're caught between two forces that are fighting for control of the territory. Unless something is done, the massacre will continue but we aren't supposed to get involved because it's not our fight.
So what does the left propose? Should we just go ahead and bring all and sundry, anyone who asks, into the US and Europe? I don't want to do that. Not because I don't have a heart, but because I do have a head. How easy would it be for ISIS to infiltrate the refugees? Out of 10,000 people if you have just one dozen - twelve bad actors - how much damage could they do here or in Europe?
Show up at an embassy looking like a poor, downtrodden victim. Beg for entrance for yourself and your family and be given a pass with nary a background check, questionnaire or cursory inspection. That's how Obie-One and John Kerry and the rest of the rat pack in Washington want it because it looks so nice, so kind.
Never mind that the wannabe immigrant is holding the design for an attack under his robes. Knowing that we're leery of lone 'strong young men', ISIS has probably already adapted. While the vast majority of Syrian family men really are family men, they will probably use the skirts of willing women, or unwilling women to whom they're married and with whom they have children, and sucker us. Just a few getting into the country and connecting up with sympathizers here could do huge amounts of damage. Hide in the shelter of a woman's burqa with a passel of kids, beg for entrance and... And these vermin have no compunction about hiding in the skirts of their women. That's why they've surrounded themselves with women and children in Syria.
What needs to happen, but won't because Obie-One has none between his legs and Herman Munster (aka John Kerry) has nothing between his ears, is we need to refuse these people. Or we need to bring them in and set them up in those remote REX-84 camps Reagan built. Use them as the modern Ellis Island where these refugees stay until they're thoroughly vetted and can be released into society with better than reasonable assurance that they're 'safe'.
But, in the meantime, Putin and Assad and ISIS have free reign across Syria. That contagion will spread with flareups and outbreaks here and in Europe. It's already pushing into Turkey and, within six months if something doesn't give, Turkey is going to be at serious risk.
In the past few days Homeland Security has warned, again, that ISIS has infiltrated the refugees accepted into Europe and the US. That's about 100% certain, and ISIS is declaring it will bring its war here, to the US, this year. They are here and, because of political correctness - which prevented neighbors from reporting what they saw in the weeks leading up to the San Bernardino shooting - no one is going to report anything that looks peculiar. God forbid we should profile someone because they look, dress, speak and worship a certain way! No! Let's let 'em build their arsenal, do their training and kill dozens or hundreds or thousands of innocents. Too bad they missed the Super Bowl, but there's always the World Series, the political conventions, the Olympics and a bunch of other places full of soft targets.
Needless to say, while I'm not cowering in my bunker, neither am I going to places that are full of crowds. I'm going about my life and living in my part of the world - away from city centers and masses of people - and keeping my head up, my eyes open and my powder dry.
In economics, the Treasury is still fighting to shore up the stock market but it looks like they might be losing the battle. China's Shanghai Index and Japan's Nikkei aren't helping. No matter now hard governments try, they just cannot keep propping up the paper market because there really is no there, there. It's an empty void inside that bubble and that bubble is reaching near critical mass.
International shipping - the Baltic Dry Index - keeps falling.
The US equity markets have been down more than they've been up this year.
OPEC is flooding the market with oil, driving the price of oil down until American companies, fighting the costs of regulation and taxation, can't manage or compete. Chevron is laying of thousands of people in an attempt to cut costs.
What happens if our country's oil and gas companies go belly up? Betcha anything the left will first cheer and then, when the reality of what they've been calling for hits home, cry, 'wait a minute!' But it will be too late. An entire industry will have been destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of people from Chevron and Exxon and their supporting industries will be unemployed and gas prices will be up at $10 or more per gallon because we have to import and there are no domestic producers or refiners.
What these limousine liberals don't get because they have no capacity for rational thought is how the higher prices of gas and oil will impact those people whom they say they care about. How will the working poor who require their cars for transportation manage to pay for the gas they need to get to work? If it costs $10 per gallon and these people are making just minimum wage or a little more, that's a hefty amount of money for them - $100 to fill their tank with ten gallons of gas. Oh! Of course! We'll look to government to help us. We'll ask for subsidies. We'll just add that to the national debt and we'll get the one percent to pay for it.
The US dollar is falling again, despite the Treasury's attempts at manipulation.
What's most worrying is that the US Treasury bills - what used to be one of the safest of the safe investments - has dipped to lows not seen since 2012 and the only reason it's not lower is because the government keeps buying its own paper, making it look better than it is. That's a problem because a) those are the notes the US tries to sell around the world to get money in here so we can keep propping; b) with no one wanting them, which is part of the reason they're falling, it's only going to get worse.
I expect that within the next eighteen to twenty-four months, certainly by 2020, our debt is going to come home to roost in a big way.
If Trump gets in, and if he can effectively negotiate with Congress to undo some of the damage that's been done in the past thirty years, we might push the inevitable back by a few years. If Sanders or Clinton gets in and starts messing around with their Socialist agenda - free things for everyone and damn the cost! - we'll be hosed in short order.
First, our markets will crash and burn because no one is going to want to invest here. We will no longer be seen as the 'safe haven'. Then, our currency will go the way of the Zimbabwe dollar. No one, not even a village idiot, will believe in the 'full faith and credit of the United States' because there will be none. Our dollar will have no value, no perceived intrinsic value anywhere else but here. And, yes, the following image of a one hundred trillion dollar note is real. You can read about Zimbabwe's meltdown here: http://www.cato.org/zimbabwe
Imagine living in a country where the daily inflation rate is at virtually 100%. You go to the store on Monday and the loaf of bread is $2.00. On Tuesday it's $4.00. By Friday - in just five days - that same loaf of bread costs $64 dollars! And we are in far worse position than Zimbabwe. As a country, as an economy, Zimbabwe was nothing compared to the United States.
When we go, it is going to be unbelievable - and it will take down the rest of the world. After the first shock, which will hit like an earthquake and then continue with aftershocks, it will take probably take between six and ten months to start showing signs of settling, but it's going to be devastating and it is something that will take not years but at least a generation from which to recover.
At that point, no one is going to want US dollars - which is something that Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa (BRICS) have been praying for. OPEC wouldn't mind, either, since they don't like the US all that much. If economically important countries around the world peg their currencies and their trade to another currency, the US will not just be hamstrung, it will be economically crippled.
After things start to recover and get back on track, the United States, because of the monetary manipulation of its government, our enormous debt load and the instant fall from Goliath to gnat, will never be a world player again in our lifetimes. We will be that third world country - the 'has been' over which everyone else shakes their heads, points and says, 'see, pride does go before the fall.'
Chickens coming home to roost and what I predicted in broad terms back in 2007 before Obie-One got the nomination and won the Presidency. Then I said that by 2014 or 2015 our economy would be in a shambles and the Dow would be down around 7,500. I didn't foresee the Treasury and Fed intervention with POMO, so I was wrong about that, but look at the rest of it:
We have nearly doubled our national debt in the past fifteen years. This is debt that we, our children, our children's children and their children's children will never be able to repay. We just passed $19T in debt, without including the entitlements of Social Security and Medicare. Those push our total debt - what we owe to all and sundry - upwards of $64 trillion. That debt is continuing to increase, exponentially, by the second.
Following the Great Recession from 2007 through 2012, the "regular" work week went from forty hours per week to just thirty, meaning that full-time work is no longer full-time. In this scenario, a worker is earning less money per hour and working fewer hours. A $20 per hour worker in a forty hour week would earn $800 per week. In the new paradigm of thirty hours, their real wages are down $200 per week to just $600. No wonder so many people now require government assistance to live!
Aside from wage pressure, unemployment is not as rosy as the Bureau of Labor Statistics and government would like us to believe. Real unemployment is still around 10% but after the BLS manipulates the data, adding in casual workers - people who can't find regular work but are sometimes employed - and temporary workers, along with made up numbers of people it "thinks" are working and pulling numbers out of the air for "kitchen table entrepreneurs", they're able to adjust the unemployment rate to about 5%. Which, in any other scenario, is good. However, the fact that they have to make things up as they go to get it there doesn't tell the whole story.
Supporting my statement above, this is from Gallup's Daily snapshot taken just yesterday morning:
For example, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) does not count a person who desires work as unemployed if he or she is not working and has stopped looking for work over the past four weeks. Similarly, the BLS does not count someone as unemployed if he or she is, for instance, an out-of-work engineer, construction worker or retail manager who performs a minimum of one hour of work a week and receives at least $20 in compensation.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/187589/bls-unemployment-seasonally-adjusted.aspx
So if you want to work but have given up looking through frustration, you're employed.
If you work for just one $20 hour per week, you're employed.
Real wages are down significantly. The number of under-employed, those people with strong training and skills who cannot find work in their field, is huge: 14%.
'Good jobs', those defined as regular work for thirty-plus hours per week, are at 44.7%, down from 45.3% in December and 44.9% in November. This data is also available from the link above.
The Fed is already manipulating the stock market. They are already determining our growth by trying zero interest rates to make our debt burden a bit less intolerable, but that's not working. Investment still hasn't moved because who wants to invest and get no return? Now they're talking, seriously, about negative interest rates.
Instead of putting your money into an account or a fund and getting a return, you get to park your money there and pay for the privilege. This is one reason the government is pushing us away from a cash trade system.
If we no longer have cash, if everything is done by electronic transfer through debit and credit cards and cash transactions go the way of the dinosaur, they will have us by the economic short-ones and can pull as long and as hard as they like. If your money, your labor as represented by money, is in their hands who has control of it? Take a 401k as an example.
If you're in a 401k you're already paying an administrative fee. You put the money in but you cannot touch it until you reach age 59.5. If you do before then, you're penalized except in certain situations and in those you have to repay that money within a set time period.
In the past few years there have been serious steps taken in government designed to take your 401k funds so they can be passed out to people who haven't saved. The 401k annuity program is a first step.
They say you're guaranteed a return but the plan is to turn that into a redistribution of your wealth.
http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2012/12/how-government-is-coming-after-your-ira.html
The linked article is from 2012 and is darker than the more recent articles because the Fed and the Department of Labor have already instituted this scheme. Ultimately, they are planning to reduce your annuity payment to somewhere in the range of 3% per year. That means that for every $1,000 you have saved, you would get an annual payout of just $30, or a whopping $2.50 per month. The rest would be distributed to people who didn't save. How do you like that idea? Your money, the money you worked hard to earn and save, wouldn't be yours anymore. It would belong to someone else because government says so.
That's one of the reasons government wants to do away with cash transactions. You can put your credit card away in a safe or under a mattress, but that's only a representation of your buying power. If your money is kept in digits on a computer someplace, the government can take it, just by the push of a button.
Nine years ago I projected that by 2017 the standard of living in the United States of America will look like Senegal on a good day. We're just about there, the window might be a little bigger than I said back then, but I do think the timbers under this massive mess are starting to crack and shift. It's just a matter of time until it all collapses around our ears.
What's really pathetic are the paper-gold investors. Those people who have invested in gold 'funds' and think they have some sort of security because they 'own' gold. In fact, all they own is a piece of paper.
Going back to my analogy of a tree (gold) and sawdust, you cannot parse a single ounce of gold ten thousand people each think they own into ten thousand ounces of gold. It is just one ounce divided by ten thousand. And that is precisely what investors in EFT gold funds are: the equivalent of sawdust. When the spit hits the fan and those people run to their broker demanding settlement, it isn't going to be there. They will be offered paper currency in exchange, and that is going to be worthless in the scenario I see coming.
But, no worries. The way Pyong Yang is going, and the US is doing nothing to stop, we'll have a nuclear weapon detonating somewhere over US territory in another year or so and that'll solve some problems. Not the currencies and economics, but it will certainly draw our attention away from the fact that no one is working, we're all freezing and starving and the money we have in our pockets is more useful for keeping warm than it is for buying things.
Best~
Philippa
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories
Wednesday, January 13, 2016
Powerball, Fear and Other Stuff
Comin' up on the Powerball draw again and tensions here are... non-existent. That's the problem, or the benefit, of living with someone who's math savvy. Hubby is math savvy. Hubby can drain the excitement out of speculating about the Powerball draw faster than a vacuum can suck the air out of an open paper sack. He starts talking numbers and odds and so on and my eyes glaze over.
Oh well. Dreaming and hoping and crossing fingers, toes, legs, arms and eyes is still... awkward. It's hard to get things done when your limbs and digits are all knotted up. Guess I should let go and relax. What's going to happen is going to happen regardless of what I do here. I'll just have to wait until tomorrow to learn whether I'm a schmuck or a winner.
In the meantime I am practicing what I'll say at my (snarky) news conference. I don't like the media. They're intrusive and ask stupid questions, so I'll keep it short, sweet and to the point:
1) Do you have an imagination? Use it. Figure out how it feels to be suddenly wealthy.
2) No, you can't have my money.
3) I know who my friends and family are. Don't come to me and say you're long-lost anything. I'll just say 'get lost'.
4) No, you can't have my money.
5) Yes, I have plans but you don't need to know what those plans are. They're my plans, not yours.
6) No, you can't have my money.
7) Yes, I know what I'm doing with it but you don't need to know what I'm doing with it.
8) It's none of your business and, no, you can't have my money.
9) Yes, I plan to contribute a lot of it to charity.
10) No, you're not a charity to which I'm contributing. Or, if you are, you'll be hearing from me. If you don't hear from me, go away.
Simple, right?
On the election front, I've been going back and forth with a couple of members of 'my' writer's site about Donald Trump. They seem to think that he's a maniac, ready and willing to press The Button that will wipe out humanity. I seem to remember the same nonsense being spewed about Ronald Reagan and George Bush I and Bill Clinton and George Bush II and every other presidential candidate since the 1960's. Yet we're still here. Huh.
The press also has their panties in a collective twist over Donald's apparent "admiration" for Kim Jong Un, completely contorting the man's words into something even a pretzel wouldn't recognize.
What Donald said, according to Business Insider and the other outlets I read, is that Kim Jong Un is a maniac. Now that's not a nice thing to say. After all, the definition of maniac from Dictionary.com is:
maniac
Hardly words of praise or admiration.
Trump then went on to talk about the man's ruthlessness, his viciousness, and the threat someone like this poses. Here's the quote from Business Insider, the quote that's been twisted into mega-pretzel contortions by all of the outlets:
"If you look at North Korea, this guy, I mean, he's like a maniac, OK? And you've got to give him credit. How many young guys — he was like 26 or 25 when his father died — take over these tough generals," Trump said in Ottumwa, Iowa.
The Republican presidential front-runner said Kim's willingness to push aside generals and "wipe out" his uncle demonstrated why the US needs to treat North Korea's nuclear arsenal as a serious threat.
"And all of a sudden — and you know it's pretty amazing when you think of it — how does he do that? Even though it is a culture and it's a cultural thing, he goes in, he takes over, and he's the boss," Trump recalled. "It's incredible. He wiped out the uncle. He wiped out this one, that one. I mean, this guy doesn't play games. And we can't play games with him. Because he really does have missiles. And he really does have nukes."
http://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-north-korea-kim-jong-un-2016-1
Do these sound like words of praise and admiration to you, or does it sound like a warning? To me, it sounds like a warning. Isn't the phrase "serious threat" in there someplace, and isn't it associated with North Korea and a mention of a nuclear arsenal? Oh, yeah, it is. Huh, how about that.
And, if you go to the bottom of that article, there's a link to another article: "Donald Trump: Here's how I'd handle that 'madman' in North Korea"
So the headlines being blared are that Trump admires this 'maniac'. But Trump then calls him a madman. It makes no sense. It's taking Truth and standing it on its head.
The problem we have here is Press Distortion. There's what the press wants - same-old, same-old manipulable, malleable, compliant Hilliary or one of the other politicians - and what most of America wants - a leader.
Since the press has the power of disbursing half-truths and outright lies, and people seem to have a tendency to lap it all up, they continue to try to blacken the man by twisting his words, taking the most outrageous things he says, and turning them into inflammatory nonsense.
What encourages me in this is that people don't seem to be buying it. Some are, no doubt, but many others aren't. They are seeing and hearing the real message. Not the one promulgated by the press, the one where they take a person's words and rearrange them to fit their desired paradigm. Instead, people are listening to the man, themselves, and are hearing what he's saying, themselves, and they're understanding what he's saying and meaning, themselves. Which is driving the left and the media crazy. They can't figure it out.
If it wasn't so serious it would be funny. If it wasn't so telling about the media and their bias, bigotries, and hate for anything they can't manipulate and control, it would be funny. Sadly, it's not. It's pathetic.
So let's all fear Donald Trump, okay? After all, he's ill-informed (and who among is perfectly informed on all subjects?). He hasn't the brains to know what he doesn't know and hire people to fill in the gaps, right? He does his own taxes and files his own paperwork and flies his own helicopter and plane and does everything himself without relying on people with more training, more knowledge and more expertise in those areas than himself, right?
Give me a break.
Anyway. I'm wondering about El Nino. Last fall we were promised a huge event. More recently we got decent amounts of rain. Then, we were supposed to get more rain, but it didn't come. Yesterday it was supposed to rain, but didn't. Over night it rained, a little, and now it's not.
Have the weather gurus got it wrong, again as usual? We'll see. Just checking Yahoo weather, it looks like in the next ten days we have five days on which there's at least a chance of rain. It's supposed to rain off and on today, tomorrow and Saturday and a couple of days next week. If it does, I'll feel a little better. If it rains more than projected, I'll be happy.
And, things are changing at work. The change I thought was coming is coming closer - as in there's a meeting about it today. Done deal? Yeah, probably. Mixed feelings on my part that will solidify once I understand what's needed and how long it'll take. I'm just like most other human beings. Change is uncomfortable until I know what to expect. Then, once I know what to expect, it's generally okay.
So that's life on the home front these days. Looking forward to tomorrow, to being able to pull out my tickets and...
Best~
Philippa
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories
Oh well. Dreaming and hoping and crossing fingers, toes, legs, arms and eyes is still... awkward. It's hard to get things done when your limbs and digits are all knotted up. Guess I should let go and relax. What's going to happen is going to happen regardless of what I do here. I'll just have to wait until tomorrow to learn whether I'm a schmuck or a winner.
In the meantime I am practicing what I'll say at my (snarky) news conference. I don't like the media. They're intrusive and ask stupid questions, so I'll keep it short, sweet and to the point:
1) Do you have an imagination? Use it. Figure out how it feels to be suddenly wealthy.
2) No, you can't have my money.
3) I know who my friends and family are. Don't come to me and say you're long-lost anything. I'll just say 'get lost'.
4) No, you can't have my money.
5) Yes, I have plans but you don't need to know what those plans are. They're my plans, not yours.
6) No, you can't have my money.
7) Yes, I know what I'm doing with it but you don't need to know what I'm doing with it.
8) It's none of your business and, no, you can't have my money.
9) Yes, I plan to contribute a lot of it to charity.
10) No, you're not a charity to which I'm contributing. Or, if you are, you'll be hearing from me. If you don't hear from me, go away.
Simple, right?
On the election front, I've been going back and forth with a couple of members of 'my' writer's site about Donald Trump. They seem to think that he's a maniac, ready and willing to press The Button that will wipe out humanity. I seem to remember the same nonsense being spewed about Ronald Reagan and George Bush I and Bill Clinton and George Bush II and every other presidential candidate since the 1960's. Yet we're still here. Huh.
The press also has their panties in a collective twist over Donald's apparent "admiration" for Kim Jong Un, completely contorting the man's words into something even a pretzel wouldn't recognize.
What Donald said, according to Business Insider and the other outlets I read, is that Kim Jong Un is a maniac. Now that's not a nice thing to say. After all, the definition of maniac from Dictionary.com is:
maniac
[mey-nee-ak]
noun
1. a raving or violently
insane person; lunatic.
2. any intemperate
or overly zealous or enthusiastic person:
a maniac when it
comes to details.
Hardly words of praise or admiration.
Trump then went on to talk about the man's ruthlessness, his viciousness, and the threat someone like this poses. Here's the quote from Business Insider, the quote that's been twisted into mega-pretzel contortions by all of the outlets:
"If you look at North Korea, this guy, I mean, he's like a maniac, OK? And you've got to give him credit. How many young guys — he was like 26 or 25 when his father died — take over these tough generals," Trump said in Ottumwa, Iowa.
The Republican presidential front-runner said Kim's willingness to push aside generals and "wipe out" his uncle demonstrated why the US needs to treat North Korea's nuclear arsenal as a serious threat.
"And all of a sudden — and you know it's pretty amazing when you think of it — how does he do that? Even though it is a culture and it's a cultural thing, he goes in, he takes over, and he's the boss," Trump recalled. "It's incredible. He wiped out the uncle. He wiped out this one, that one. I mean, this guy doesn't play games. And we can't play games with him. Because he really does have missiles. And he really does have nukes."
http://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-north-korea-kim-jong-un-2016-1
Do these sound like words of praise and admiration to you, or does it sound like a warning? To me, it sounds like a warning. Isn't the phrase "serious threat" in there someplace, and isn't it associated with North Korea and a mention of a nuclear arsenal? Oh, yeah, it is. Huh, how about that.
And, if you go to the bottom of that article, there's a link to another article: "Donald Trump: Here's how I'd handle that 'madman' in North Korea"
So the headlines being blared are that Trump admires this 'maniac'. But Trump then calls him a madman. It makes no sense. It's taking Truth and standing it on its head.
The problem we have here is Press Distortion. There's what the press wants - same-old, same-old manipulable, malleable, compliant Hilliary or one of the other politicians - and what most of America wants - a leader.
Since the press has the power of disbursing half-truths and outright lies, and people seem to have a tendency to lap it all up, they continue to try to blacken the man by twisting his words, taking the most outrageous things he says, and turning them into inflammatory nonsense.
What encourages me in this is that people don't seem to be buying it. Some are, no doubt, but many others aren't. They are seeing and hearing the real message. Not the one promulgated by the press, the one where they take a person's words and rearrange them to fit their desired paradigm. Instead, people are listening to the man, themselves, and are hearing what he's saying, themselves, and they're understanding what he's saying and meaning, themselves. Which is driving the left and the media crazy. They can't figure it out.
If it wasn't so serious it would be funny. If it wasn't so telling about the media and their bias, bigotries, and hate for anything they can't manipulate and control, it would be funny. Sadly, it's not. It's pathetic.
So let's all fear Donald Trump, okay? After all, he's ill-informed (and who among is perfectly informed on all subjects?). He hasn't the brains to know what he doesn't know and hire people to fill in the gaps, right? He does his own taxes and files his own paperwork and flies his own helicopter and plane and does everything himself without relying on people with more training, more knowledge and more expertise in those areas than himself, right?
Give me a break.
Anyway. I'm wondering about El Nino. Last fall we were promised a huge event. More recently we got decent amounts of rain. Then, we were supposed to get more rain, but it didn't come. Yesterday it was supposed to rain, but didn't. Over night it rained, a little, and now it's not.
Have the weather gurus got it wrong, again as usual? We'll see. Just checking Yahoo weather, it looks like in the next ten days we have five days on which there's at least a chance of rain. It's supposed to rain off and on today, tomorrow and Saturday and a couple of days next week. If it does, I'll feel a little better. If it rains more than projected, I'll be happy.
And, things are changing at work. The change I thought was coming is coming closer - as in there's a meeting about it today. Done deal? Yeah, probably. Mixed feelings on my part that will solidify once I understand what's needed and how long it'll take. I'm just like most other human beings. Change is uncomfortable until I know what to expect. Then, once I know what to expect, it's generally okay.
So that's life on the home front these days. Looking forward to tomorrow, to being able to pull out my tickets and...
Best~
Philippa
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories
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