July 2018

Hell-Fire: New Not Normal Firestorms

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*Help, the planet is on fire. From Siberia to the Congo Basin and the Arctic to Brazil and much in between, the onslaught of terrestrial and marine heatwaves is ubiquitous.

World Fire Map - Hell-fire

The oceans, which drive the climate, are supercharged with fossil fuel heat. 300 zettajoules of man-made heat have lambasted our planet. All life lives within a habitable range of temperatures. Once that range is exceeded, death occurs.

Instead of heeding thousands of scientific warnings urging all nations to reduce fossil fuel emissions, the opposite has occurred. Keep Reading

The Alcoholic Next Door

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Alcoholism

*That glorious moment when you get to put your head down and shut your eyes and let it all go away for a few hours. The TV still emitting a faint glow, this side of the pillow still cool, lids barely touching and BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG! Damn! 12:30 at night. This can’t be good.

One of my neighbors. A very nice young lady crying and babbling and reaching for a hug – needing to be not wrong for a moment. Details trickle out as they are withheld, revolving around a drunk husband, a dog beaten to death, a rope being held by its end. Sadly, it is just another story to add to my life’s collection; each heartbreaking, each unique yet identical to all the others.

Prohibition did not work. People like to drink. They have since the first accidentally-fermented grapes were bravely ingested. No matter how many marriages it wrecks, families it demolishes or lives it obliterates, alcohol is not going to go away. Keep Reading

Carter Page: Redacted and Divided

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*The redacted version of the Carter Page FISA application is out.

The kernel of the evil seed has sprouted, as we have former lawmen use the term “FISA debacle” to describe the process only active FBI agents, four Republican judges on the FISA panel, and DOJ officials know to be true. The alleged conspirators, or as the media calls them – collaborators: a news network (specific media have been able to cast doubt and attack the integrity and reputation of the FBI), the agents, the DOJ, attorneys for DOJ, the FISA judges, and the FISA judicial process.

Call our institutions, our Constitution and our legal process the swamp. Read and interpret the redacted pages of the FISA report to suit your fancy so your soapbox of judgment will determine your outcome, and if it does not go your way, there will be some left in the herd to manipulate.

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Climate Crisis – Heatwaves, Firestorms, Failing Crops

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Heatwave - Climate Change

*The planet is exhibiting telltale symptoms of our addiction to burning climate-wrecking fossil fuels: hellacious wildfires, unrelenting heat, sweltering Arctic temperatures and withering crops in northern Europe. We are in a climate crisis!

14 million people in the megalopolis of London braced themselves for record-breaking heat, dubbed “Furnace Friday.” Combustion-induced smog levels soared exacerbated by extreme heat. Intense demand for power had emergency services on red alert. Hospitals contended with many heatwave casualties. 90,000 lightning strikes, flash flooding and wildfires ravaged sun-baked Britain in an unforgettable week of Mother’s Nature’s unbridled overheated wrath.

Burnt Cars from Greece's July 2018 Firestorm - Climate Change
Apocalyptic fiery images of burnt cars from Greece’s firestorm of July 23, 2018. Photo credit: The Guardian

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Too Old For Office – Are Age Limits Appropriate?

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Age Limits

*How about some age limits?  I know, I know; you can’t do that – discrimination; ageism; our seniors are our greatest treasure. OK. And as someone that has of late been the recipient of impudent young whippersnapper’s thoughtless comments and assumptions about my age and its affect on my ability to do this or that, I can tell you that being judged based on your appearance sucks; I can only image what my darker-skinned brothers and sisters have had to deal with their entire lives while living in this racist country.

But seriously, how about some age limits?

Donald Trump
Photo Credit; Charisma News

The president is seventy-two and is apparently going to run for reelection, which would make him seventy-eight if could finish a second term without blowing up the world. He could make it, or he could drop dead any day now. More to the point, he has less of an idea about what it is like to live in this country in this century than the ETs floating around above us.

Rounds of golf and hookers costing thousands of dollars each are not within the realm of the average American, yet he takes these things for granted. His antiquated ignorant perspective on people less white than he and the resulting utter lack of connection with people of color is typified in the mess he has created by sticking his nose in the NFL’s anthem controversy – a place his nose has no business being.

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A Father’s Journey – Part 5. Relax Daddy, Just Follow My Lead

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Steven Pecevich (father) reading to baby Sydni

* Relax, Daddy. Just follow my lead. It’ll be okay. Let me show you the way.

*Stephen Pecevich, a single dad of three in the Boston area, had his life take a complete detour when his youngest child was diagnosed with cancer before she she was even 60 days old.  Follow the story of how this devoted father found faith and strength on what Stephen calls “a life detour”, as we publish regular excerpts from Stephen’s own memoir, which will be available in its entirety in the near future.

January 25th

Dear Sydni,

*The moment I arrived at the hospital this morning, without delay, I noticed a teardrop sliding down the contour of your rosy right cheek. Instinctively, I wiped the droplet from your face, brushed it against my lips followed by crossways over my heart.

Right then and there, I prayed to God that He allow me to absorb your struggle and pain. When I opened my eyes, to my immediate wonder, in the place of your anguish and grief, I instead was beholden to calmness and repose. I perceived pure beauty. It was as if you were saying:

“Relax, Daddy. Just follow my lead. It’ll be okay. Let me show you the way.”

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Big Data & Big Business = Big Bucks

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Big Data

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NICE GUYS FINISH LAST

I’m not in opposition to “big” things. I am, however, fearful of “big” things going bad. Hedge funds losing billions of dollars (Knight Capital) and having the stones to ask for their money back. Brian Hunter of Aramanth losing $6 billion. Big moves can lead to big mistakes. Torch Tower, one of the tallest buildings in the world, where catching fire on a regular basis is the norm. The Titanic, which was the biggest ocean liner in the world, within a short period of time, became the biggest ocean liner at the bottom of the Atlantic.

Make no mistake about it; we are in the era of Big Data. Data collected on every click you make, every time you press a key on your keyboard.  Insight, pattern recognition and projection, all aspects of human intelligence, are being performed by machines that may or may not be making the best of judgments.

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Hogg Wild – The Arrogance of Youth

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David Hogg - Hogg Wild
A government that exists of, by, for and through its people, and at the same time stands as a land of law, not of men, is as difficult a thing to manage as it gets, and no where is this more onerous than on the issue of guns in America.  Common sense solutions to gun violence are at hand, but stomping out into the public arena with such blinding chicanery and political opportunism as seen with anti-gun Democrats, on a continuum, gets directly in the way of those common sense solutions we all should seek in compromise and unity.

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For David Hogg to be held up as a poster child of choice for gun control, at the hands of puppet masters with axes to grind, is a terrible mistake, and a readily identifiable one.

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By directly attacking an American President and Commander in Chief of the United States Armed Forces on such a preeminent and potentially dangerous issue as Iran, by way of propping up and trotting out someone so far out of his league it hurts to watch, done with such vitriol, disdain and mockery of the office of the presidency, ought to sound a death knell for such activism, activism that uses death tolls strictly for political benefit.
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Iceland’s Repugnant Whaling Bloodbath

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Blue Whale slaughtered - Iceland Whaling

*The direct action conservation movement Sea Shepherd revealed that on July 7, 2018, Iceland’s only fin whaling company, Hvalur hf, tortured and murdered an endangered blue whale.

For almost 50 years blues have been protected. During the 20th century, 360,000 of these glorious beauties were obliterated, including 29,000 in one year alone. Their populations have not rebounded.

Blue Whale - Iceland Whaling
At 100 feet long and 200 tons, blues are Nature’s priceless treasures.

Today, those that remain are filled with man-made poisons. The song of the largest animal to have ever lived on Earth is mostly drowned-out from humongous propellers of 100,000 ocean vessels daily, and incessant deafening air gun surveys for more climate-wrecking subsidized fossil fuels. A deaf whale is a dead whale. Keep Reading

House Staffer Suppresses Information from Congress

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Veterans

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DISSENT MUTED AS VETERANS BILL ADVANCES TO HOUSE FLOOR

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Students around the country who study political science in high school or college are taught the fundamentals of how Congress works. This includes how Congress considers policy, passes laws, works in committees, and the rules for how issues are debated, and much much more. Each congressional session in our nation’s Capitol, students who study political science (and the nation at large), have the opportunity to watch their representatives in action at the U.S. Capitol building, legislative office hearing rooms, or of course— Live on CSPAN from the comforts of their own home. However, one of the most influential players in law making process is often hard for the citizen to see.

These unknown and underestimated influencers are not the lawmaker, not a reporter, not a lobbyist, not a celebrity, not the business executive, and sadly not the citizen. One of the most powerful and unknown voices in our modern lawmaking process is the “professional committee staffer” in Congress.

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In more than 10 years working in politics, I have never felt the need to unmask a staff member publicly, before now.

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NATO – Frienemies at 2%

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NATO - Frienemies at 2%

*The Rubicon was crossed on July 11 in Brussels when President Donald Trump laid bare the façade of the ambitions of the United States.

We have officially become an imperial power, exacting tribute from those whom we enfold within the protection of our magnificent arms. Acting unilaterally, against the advice and wisdom proffered by those in his administration who possess a brain, he demanded that NATO members not only meet the level of a 2% of GDP defense spending level, but feels it should be doubled to 4%. One can only assume there will be a Paypal account set up to forward delinquent accounts to US coffers.

President Trump Speaks at NATO Summit in Brussels - NATO- Frenemies at 2%
President Trump Speaks at the NATO Summit in Brussels

I can understand “shaking things up” as being a necessary step in order to bring about a change in behavior. We may agree that some sort of action was needed in order to prod reluctant allies to meet their commitment to fund the common defense. But the behavior of bullying that was on exhibit in Brussels goes far beyond what a prudent person would do in order to maintain workable relations with our allies.
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Too Much Forged in Fire

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You might be watching too much Forged in Fire if:

  • Your kids are making a fortune selling snow cones, as there is a constant supply of chopped ice.
  • You can’t watch TV because the satellite dish is in the back yard filled with coal.
  • You walk into the kitchen to see why Sunday dinner is late, to find a $35 roast beef hanging from the ceiling, your wife wielding a knife in each hand, watching a youtube clip of Doug Marcaida.
  • The beater car in your neighbor’s backyard seems to be walking away piece by piece – first the leaf springs, then the axle …

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The Failure of Neoliberalism in the World

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Neoliberalism

*Keynesianism is dead. 

The economic failure of liberal capitalism from the American Revolution (1776) and the French Revolution (1789) to the Great Depression with the crack on the New York Stock Exchange (1929) led to the adoption of Keynesianism based on the ideas of the English economist, John Maynard Keynes, who unlike classical economic liberals, defended state action in the economy with the objective of achieving full employment. 

Keynesian philosophy ceased to be effective by the 1970s, due to the decline in world economic growth after the so-called “glorious years” of the 1950’s and 60’s. There were two oil crises along with the debt crisis experienced by most  countries of the world that drove insolvency at international banks. 

This situation made the conservative forces of the United Kingdom and the United States, under the leadership respectively of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, carry forward neoliberalism whose economic doctrine advocated the return of liberalism now on the world stage – which meant absolute market freedom and a restriction on state intervention on the economy. Neoliberalism was adopted after the end of the Soviet Union and the Eastern European socialist system in 1989, respectively.

With neoliberalism, social inequality has reached alarming levels throughout the world.”
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Bogus Federal Commission on School Safety

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School Safety

*Kids are so much fun to be around. Little bundles of energy, they are overcome with curiosity; constantly information-gathering, testing and discovering new things. It’s hard to imagine a place specifically designed to feed that curiosity and offer information and present new things that some children would fake a tummy ache to avoid.

It’s equally difficult to imagine parents in the most world’s most prosperous nation who expect their children be both educated and tended to during work hours, yet balk at providing the financial support required to get the jobs done well.
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Trees: Nature’s Masterpiece Burned For Heat

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Burning Masterpieces for Heat - Trees

*Would you dispassionately stand by and watch if every priceless Renaissance work of art in Florence’s Uffizi Gallery, or Paris’s The Louvre, or 20th century masterpieces held in New York’s The Museum of Modern Art were burned for heat, one by one?

Ladies and gentlemen, our remaining ancient forests are indeed the equivalent to what the great master’s painted. They are Nature’s finest invaluable living, breathing masterpieces on our planet!

Trees - General Sherman Redwood
Each year, the largest tree on the globe, a sequoia named General Sherman, adds the comparable wood of one tree 1.5 feet (ft) wide by 65 ft high. Photo credit: Reese Halter

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Documenting and Detailing the Discrimination Against the Decrepit

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Age Discrimination - Employees at work

*For those of us who have taken marketing coursework, we know that one of the most important aspects of any marketing plan is to identify your target market. If you aim at the wrong target, you will surely fail to achieve your goal. In my career, I have sold, excuse me marketed, over a million dollars’ worth of merchandise, to various target markets. One of my hard-learned fundamental precepts of marketing is that you should never try to market something that you wouldn’t purchase yourself.  I have done marketing research as well, and it was so good that students in the next class copied my research design, almost to the letter. You will always know the value of your work by who copies it, steals it, or clams that it is their own. While I wasn’t necessarily offended by their behavior, I resented that the professor approved and encouraged it. He probably didn’t even use my name when describing the design.

When recruiting potential employees, you are essentially selling the company to a postulant. But if no one was aware that a company or organization was looking for employees, the number of candidates would be limited. Selling is marketing, and marketing is selling.

My favorite marketing joke is:

Do you know what they call a salesman who can’t sell anything?

The director of marketing.”

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My Wall Street, My Financial Future

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*Last week I read an article in a prominent financial magazine written by an unnamed professional financial advisor. Unsurprisingly, he simply spouted off reasons why everyone should work with a financial advisor and even recommended readers invest with someone who will operate in a “fiduciary capacity” (AKA have ultimate control over your money).

He did make some solid points, namely about the importance of finding someone independent  and trustworthy with an investment style you’re comfortable with. These characteristics are crucial to your peace of mind— your future is everything, and you need someone with your goals in mind managing your money.

The author made finding your dream advisor seem as easy as asking a friend or someone you respect for a recommendation. I hate to break it to you, but he or she doesn’t exist— unless you consider yourself an option. Who knows your needs, risk-tolerance, and plans for the future better than you?

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Hot As Hell, Everywhere

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Hot as Hell - Boy in Water

*12 footballs fields a minute are incinerating in California’s latest wildfires,  adding to the 104 football fields furiously felled every minute, 24/7/365, on our ailing overheated planet.

When heat and drought collide firestorms erupt across the western United States and elsewhere on the globe. The higher the mercury soars, the quicker the fine fuels in the forest become tinder-dry kindling, especially amidst a drought.

Hot as Hell - Map
Photo Credit: Weather Channel

113 million Americans are blanketed by a massive heat dome. It stretches from the Mississippi Valley up to Philadelphia, Chicago and arches over to New York City, Boston, Baltimore and the nation’s capital, Washington, D.C. Temperatures are soaring into triple digits, 10 to 20 degrees Fahrenheit (F) above normal.
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