First Blog

Check Your New Privacy Settings. Face it. Keeping your privacy these days is not automatic. You must be an activist even to keep your buying transactions personal. You know your credit rating is easily determined by almost anyone. You accept Amazon knows what you’re buying.   But did you know that another site, VENMO.COM, knows this as well and sells the info.   Cash may make a comeback. Check Your New Political Settings.   Democrat? Republican?   No, no, no.   You must decide whether you are a tea-party Republican, establishment Republican, Trump Republican, moderate Democrat, socialist Democrat, leftist Democrat, Pelosi loyalist, and on and on – and on.   Even if you claim the mantel of “independent,” you must decide your type, moderate, left leaning, right leaning, and more. I’m sure we may find out there a few thousand Marxist independents, i.e. Marxists who revile the Democrats.   What to do?   Check Your Toast Settings. It is almost certain that attorney Michael C

The circle of life goes round and round and on every return trip it seems to have new settings. This is good.   It means you’re still living, not just alive.

Politics in America edges ever closer and closer to insanity. It seems that when a politician arrives in DC, they are instructed to leave intelligence behind - and do. They need help - in the form of a GPS direction finder. The Democrats used their new on board GPS destination finder with input destination “Victory this fall.” Their machine first tells them “Lean left.”   Then “Turn left.” Then “Veer left.” Then “Lurch left.” The “Swerve left.” Then “Collapse to the left.” Then “Go Cuban.” Got it. Even poor Nancy has been caught by the new GPS machine. When Schumer buys-in, the mission is complete.  ---------------------------- The Republicans also bought such a machine, giving it the same destination.  Their machine told them “Lean this way and that way and this way and that way and …” And that’s just what they’re doing. ----------------------------- Now Trump looks this over and says, you guessed it, "I don't need no stinkin' machine.&quo

On Love: When citizens stop loving their children, they stop loving their country. When citizens stop loving their country, they reject their future in favor of que será, será . More on Hate: Many authors maintain that hate is contagious. Perhaps.  If it is a disease, it is one from which only a few are immune, and possibly even fewer recover.  Hate does not make best friends, but does create co-haters. A bond built on hate is weak. The hateful person is eventually hated. Some develop a thirst for hate.   Filling an emotional need, it substitutes for love.   For globalists: A. When you put your country second, you put your citizens second as well. B. If you want globalism, you must be willing to redistribute many of your rights. C. When you give away the keys to your castle, you aren’t likely to get them back. D. When you jump into the tornado thinking you know where you’ll come out, you’re either kinda crazy or kinda stupid.

Congressional Hearings Have you watched Congressional (or Senate) hearings lately?   I have.   They're not pretty. Unlike only a few decades ago, most Congressional interrogators come armed only with talking points or staff generated questions.   The quality is usually poor; the delivery automatic; the responses are either submissive or arrogant.   Television does not help the quality of the event, diminishing the findings mostly because it gives national exposure. We offer several categories of questioners.   Most are dedicated to various forms of grandstanding, emotional displays, partisan attacks, and irrational utterances. All questioners are given only a few minutes to make points or make questions. They must be quick. Nimble? Forget that. The List. A. Pepper spray – Offering a barrage of questions giving little or no time for answers. B. Passion fruit – I feel so intense about this injustice to the American people and want to make you accountable. You bad person

Hate quotes are everywhere.   The Internet is loaded with them.   Many are created by celebrities trying to be clever.   Many more are created by philosophers. Others are biblical.   Some are fantastic; most are stupid. Check them out.   Did you know the usage of “hate” in the literature has tripled in the last twenty years*?   Hate is becoming ever more popular.   Here are few manufactured at my little factory of convolution – except for the Perry Mason quote, which I like. Hate is the swizzle stick of discontent.   (And after it stirs things up, it pollutes.) Some people tend a garden of hatred, fertilizing their crops with coarse and vile thought. “Hate has a taste all its own that fills your throat and chokes you.” --- The Perry Mason Show, The Nervous Accomplice. Hate destroys - the self when internal, others when external. “I hate the weather,” is not hate, but merely a rebuke. They say hate is an emotion, but it is also a fuel. Hate is expected to be a bumper crop

A. “Hate has a taste all its own that fills your throat and chokes you.” --- The Perry Mason Show B. “There are a great many people who are more clever than intelligent.” --- Bruno J. Zwolinski C. For some schools, excellence is always on summer vacation. D. The loyalty paradox:   Uncommon loyalty favors neither good nor evil, neither the scared nor the profane, neither love nor hate.   E. Fundamentally, learning is as nonlinear as are the differences between students. If all were linear, teaching would be easy. F. Cosmologists are the ultimate optimists, believing a complete knowledge of the universe is at hand.   Yet each problem resolved reveals another with double the difficulty.

When I was much younger, like an undergrad, I’d go out with friends for maybe a pizza and the discussion would be enjoined.   We’d argue this way and that, about one view or another.   We’d argue on and on until the pizza was long gone and bedtime or study time was upon us. Few feelings were hurt by the other. After all, it was just opinions shot back and forth.   The critical value of an opinion is in its flux of belief . It can or could be changed. Today, it’s different. When venturing onto websites of columnists, especially those of contributors, opinions are no longer changeable.   They are fixed, hardened, even cast as metal. Modern students are about the same, most with cast-iron views, not to be changed by anyone, any way, anyhow. The point here is you can’t call it an opinion unless you can cite something that someone can do or say to change it.   It rare we see this. What is slapped down on the page is not opinion but absolute truth in the mind of the contributor

So let Angela Merkel make natural gas deals with Russia, personified by Vladimir Putin. Long term, it can only help the USA.  If she can pull the EU toward deals with Russia, then her own and the fundamental EU distrust of Russia can and will likely grow. Poor Angela, with her big pinkish balloon of a globalist world popped, must remain relevant. Historically, Russia has always had an imperial attitude toward every other country, but who cared. For the West, they were too far east to matter; for the East they were too far west.  Sure, they were cozy with France more than a century ago, mostly because the rich needed a cool place to shop. For a few decades in the last century, they enjoyed the power to exert power, their only emotion. Russia, in fact, does not know how to be a friend; even their “friends” don’t like them and certainly don’t trust them. With a Russia-Germany gas deal in place, the Russians, communist or imperialist, will eventually squeeze the busy, mostly har

Does practice make perfect? Not always. While the US and Europe practice all forms of birth control, their enemies practice procreation. Guess who will win this game? We are witnessing the final years of the West, for now.   As in ancient Rome, t he quest for wealth and dominion fuels population expansion; having wealth does quite the opposite. This makes wealth an alternate form of birth control.   

Like pearls in the ocean, talent is hard to find.   We   hear every day of the latest multi-billion dollar media company developing its own contents for streaming. Include Netflix, Disney, Amazon, Hulu, and more.   There are so many, you can find top-ten lists.    They are spending multiple billions on their ventures, making serials, documentaries, games, and films with large budgets.   Thus, in addition to Hollywood, cable and broadcast television, we have a host of Internet contenders.   It might be considered when only Hollywood and TV were the only sources of entertainment, there was a surprising number of flops and B-movies. Some TV series lasted only a few episodes before cancellation.   Some Hollywood movies never make it to the theaters but are sold off to the networks.   Why???   Talent.   There is just not enough. For the current crop of providers, talent is needed to create huge volumes of entertainment media.   One result is the large number of unscripted talk and

Let’s go strawless is the current battle cry of the greens.   This gives them a continuing dose of the “we care” movement to support their “feel good” philosophy.   A simple computation reveals that the elimination of straws from OTC (over the counter) purchases reduces plastic proliferation by almost an immeasurable amount. It can scarcely be compared with the general use of plastic. A suitcase full of nutcases.   The obvious conclusion is their energy is spent. They are now working on nano-conservation.   How small can you go?   Whatever happened to global warming? Or at least climate change? This is gettin' embarrassing. 

A message to all contenders… The Biggest Club • You belong to the club, and worked hard to achieve prominence among all. • You believe you should be club president.  • An outsider joins, and by fluke wins the leadership. • What do you do? Accept? Or Reject? • Republicans face this now. It could happen to the Democrats.  • We could soon live within the SSA – Socialist States of America. • Even now the “U” for “United” is fading.

I do love the Stock Markets, all of them.   Why?   Because of the abundance of theories.    Every day, no matter how the market moves there are dozens of pundits offering forth their theory as to why it went down – or up, where it’s going tomorrow or next week, and why it must crash soon or maybe elevate another couple thousand more points.   Ok, this is fine.   But the next day these same folks may expound theories postulating the opposite.   This proves market pundits have no essential understanding of economics as related to the market.   This proves pundits prefer expedience to understanding.   I am constantly besieged by brokerage firms telling me if I would only invest a million, they would help me reach my goals.   If I had this information, how to make a lot of money, I would borrow every cent I could and apply it to making a bunch of money.   I’d not tell a soul. So, why are they trying to help me?   Well, t hey have a  YAT, yet another theory!   Phooey.

The most common advice I’ve ever heard about achieving, from books to sports, from beliefs to politics, from love to marriage, and on and on, is this:   “ Never give up .”    Sometimes, we hear “never, ever, give up.” Winston Churchill is famous for this quote, but it is no doubt common over all of time, in every place, and for almost all endeavors. The undertow is persistence.   Never underestimate the value of persistence.