Not Always the Cover-Up Stupid

03 Thursday Oct 2019

Posted by in Impeachment

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As I write this during the last few hours of September, the President and his minions have been found to have committed and unbelievable number of crimes. Most of them are lying then having to come clean when the truth was given by others.

President Trump tried to extort the Ukrainian President to find some fictional evidence he could use against Joe Biden who he fears most. He tried to get the Australian President to find some evidence showing he had nothing to do with the Russian meddling in the 2016 election. He had his Secretary of State and chief advisor try to involve Italy in covering for him. Both rebuffed their efforts.

His effort to discredit the whistleblower is despicable but legal. His threats and efforts to find who, is intimidating and completely illegal.

Redirecting over three billion dollars from much needed military and personnel projects on Guam without Congressional approval abrogates the separation of powers. Withholding approved foreign aid without the approval of Congress is a crime. Both are illegal.

His personal lawyer, the Secretary of State, and the Attorney General have all claimed they either weren’t in the room when he committed some of these crimes or have been part of the cover-ups.

Didn’t his cohorts learn anything from President Nixon’s demise? He has broken the emoluments clause several times and boasts about it. He has shredded the Constitution for 22 months and continues to boast about it. Any Republican Senator not voting to find him guilty should be thought of as violating their oath.

It is Still Manipulation

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Posted by in President Trump

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Roger Kempa’s response to my opinion that Trump is manipulating the stock market is very thoughtful and fairly well researched. He cited the SEC Law prohibiting such action. What Roger doesn’t say is the law is based on those people making money from their actions. Mr. X buys a stock before his company releases information about a huge mineral find causing the stock to go up in price. Mr. X sells his stock and then shorts it. Shorting it means betting the stock will fall. He then lets the media know the report numbers have a decimal point misplaced and the stock falls. The paper trail puts Mr. X in jail.

President Eisenhower said we need autobahn type highways like Europe so we can move military equipment from coast-to-coast quickly. It was also a job creator. When he announced it the market rose with infrastructure related stocks raising the most. He manipulated the market but did not get any compensation for it. Therefore, no violation since it really happened. Even though many of his friends and others made money, he didn’t.

I do not know if Trump or his family makes money off his manipulations or if he does it for his own entertainment. Every time he says the Chinese are coming to the table to end the trade war, the market goes up. It goes back down when the Chinese say they aren’t aware of any such meeting proposal. One possibility is he wants to prop up the market to help him cater to those people who have investments in the stock market; the vast majority of those people is in Electronic Funds Transfers and mutual funds and is only looking at their end of the month report. His last statement was two days before the reports would have closed out for September. That is manipulation for a non-financial reason for him. It’s for his ego and to get him re-elected.

America’s Obsession

29 Sunday Sep 2019

Posted by in Mass Shootings

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Gee, the news just said twelve people are dead and five hundred have been hospitalized for vaping. That means they were stupid enough to put things into their lungs that didn’t belong. Now the estates for the dead and those still alive are suing the manufacturers.

Why? Congress, NRA, and millions of gun owners say it isn’t the gun that kills people, it’s the shooter. Laws have been passed protecting the manufacturer from any lawsuit including bad design and manufacture. Isn’t there an NRA type of organization for these products to buy or scare our “leaders”?

Isn’t it an oddity of American society with its legal and political systems that those people are extremely upset about those numbers which are less than the Las Vegas mass shooting? If the vaping numbers continued for a whole year, they wouldn’t total just a year’s mass shooting dead and wounded.

That is today’s America. Sad isn’t it?

Ask For a Real Plan

15 Sunday Sep 2019

Posted by in National Debt

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Here is the naked truth about the Federal Budget. For every sixty dollars you pay in income tax, the treasury pays out one hundred dollars. Even with the backdoor tax on imports the deficit will be $1,200,000,000,000 each year for the next decade. Who is responsible in Washington, D.C. for this fiscal catastrophe? We are $22,000,000,000,000 in the hole now. If we don’t have a recession – Ha, Ha, Ha – during the next ten years we will be over $35,000,000,000,000 in debt.

The President has said he wants the Federal Reserve to cut the rates to zero or below so we don’t have to pay out much interest on the debt. Rather than putting the country’s fiscal policy on a firm footing, the President is doing his slight-of-hand financing he used in business.

Most of the Democratic Presidential contenders are proposing radical but needed programs which will cost trillions. Some have come up with a tax increase to pay for it. None of them have even mentioned the huge deficit and debt we are already making future generations pay for. This is the question to ask anyone running for any political office whether it is for city, county, state, or national office. What is your plan to eliminate the budget deficit and debt without using some fantasy income or shifting debt to the future? They are all running deficits. Keep asking until they answer! Make it clear if they don’t have an answer then they should not be in office!

What Next?

15 Sunday Sep 2019

Posted by in President Trump

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The Trump-controlled statistics department says the inflation rate is under 2%. The Federal Reserve uses the same statistics to determine their policies. I remember one of Trump’s offhand remarks that he had told the department head to keep inflation numbers low and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) numbers at least 1% higher than Obama’s. Whether the numbers are accurate, I don’t know. We do know that the Bureau of Labor Statistics just announced the hiring pace for the last year, on average over 50,000 per month, was too high. Trump’s people say 2018 GDP was 3.1%; it was actually 2.5%

Did you know Trump just forced the Mexican tomato growers to raise prices by 40% on regular tomatoes and 85% on organic tomatoes? This has been done on a wide range of products we buy from abroad. When we import more expensive items, the domestic producer raises their price to increase profit raising inflation.

Trump put high tariffs on China so most of the companies which have moved their production out went to Viet Nam where labor is even cheaper. Now he is looking at putting tariffs on Viet Nam.

Recently he said “one of the fun things about being President is putting tariffs on other countries.” Tariffs are just toys to amuse him. His tariff toy has real world consequences. He wants businesses to move away from China but where can they safely go? Businesses are afraid to invest in new projects because they don’t know what he will do next. An example is USS Steel beefed up production to meet the demand caused by sanctions. Sanctions went away and now they are laying off jobs. Manufacturing jobs have been decreasing for over a year, not increasing as he constantly proclaims.

The new statistics shows the Emperor has no clothes!

The Cost of A Life

15 Sunday Sep 2019

Posted by in Planned Parenthood

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Planned Parenthood says their clinics give out contraceptives preventing over 400,000 births each year. I don’t doubt it. Since most of the children would have been born into a low income situation, the clinics saved governments billions each year in subsidies and Medicaid. Instead of trying to close them down, the conservatives should be flooding them with money. The only reason I can see for not funding them is to breed cheap slave labor to do menial jobs. Yes, it’s a stupid idea but I can’t think of another reasonable excuse.

As I have previously stated I may not like abortions but only two ways of reasonably preventing pregnancy are surgical. All others are all not 100% safe or reliable. I am most bothered by third trimester abortion but I understand why most happen. I understand why some really moral people (not just wanting to be elected) might not be able to stomach abortions.

Now let’s think about a life’s cost and commitment. Are those people protesting at abortion clinics willing to adopt the infant if it is not aborted? No! They want someone else to pay for its needs and for someone to be paid to provide foster care. Some may be good homes but the news is filled with terrible situations. The state basically drops the child off on a street corner at eighteen unless they were fortunate to have been adopted in a loving family.

Our culture says every life is precious but we lock people away for small crimes, execute people to save money, and dump immigrants trying to escape horrific conditions back into where they left. Don’t forget the people we kill overseas in the name of Democracy and misguided objectives.

How much is another life worth to each of us? $500,000, a million in taxes?

Crimes Against Humanity

09 Monday Sep 2019

Posted by in Global Warming

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When the leader of a country, an organization, or a business denies the factual evidence of climate change and global warming, they should be tried in the World Court at The Hague for crimes against humanity. When ethnic cleansing puts people in the court for killing a few thousand people, shouldn’t leaders who actively work to keep their country from reducing the level of carbon gases or continuing to produce those gases be guilty of crimes against humanity?

Never have so few people had the ability to kill all the humans without the use of nuclear weapons. The Presidents of the United States, Brazil, Philippines, Poland, and a few other countries have said it isn’t happening. They are actively eliminating any activity or program which would reduce the CO2 and methane in the air. Trump has actually fired hundreds of people in seventeen agencies for trying to educate and research climate change.

If someone is found guilty of crimes against humanity getting ten to twenty years for ethnic cleansing, what should be the penalty for killing billions? Every minute we waste denying the obvious facts and causing the remediation and reduction to be postponed is contributing to the destruction of humanity and life as we know it. What should their punishment be?

Thank You For Your Service

09 Monday Sep 2019

Posted by in Wall

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Many people say this to people who volunteered to be in our country’s military. Military pay goes from $1,500 to $15,000 each month depending on years and rank. An old saying is “Rank has its privileges.” It means the more important a person is the more privileges they get. Those in the lower ranks don’t get the best housing and facilities. Those with families will live in poverty for years and maybe their entire careers. When they retire they are eligible for government healthcare at a V.A. facility.

Why is this important at this time? The President has decided to take $3,500,000,000 from the military budget that was to fix the dilapidated, deplorable and unhealthy conditions of housing, schools, PXs, and medical facilities. He plans on spending that money to build 140 miles of wall to satisfy his ego. The Department of Defense persuaded Congress’ budget committee that the conditions were so bad, old, moldy, leaky, and dilapidated; hundreds of buildings needed to be repaired or razed and new ones built. Now if the money is going to be needlessly subverted to satisfy a narcissist ego, the “Thank you for your service” rings hallow.

I wonder if the President would put them up in his country clubs and hotels which might cost more per night than they make in a month. Yes, the commander-in-Chief definitely believes in “Rank has its privileges.”

It’s Simple Science

09 Monday Sep 2019

Posted by in Global Warming

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I assume glacier behavior and physics haven’t changed since I studied them forty-nine years ago. Glaciers are not a big block of ice as most people think. They are sort of a viscous, grainy (firn) substance which flows down hill. It is quite possible for a glacier with a static amount of ice to flow downhill and reduce its thickness. This will cause the glacier to melt faster. Thus, it is possible for a glacier to grow while dying, hence the Icelandic glacier’s demise shortly after growing.

Terminology hasn’t changed either. Scientifically, ‘weather’ is not just day to day or even a month to month time period but up to three years. It is ‘weather’ when we have a hot year, then a normal year, followed by a cooler year. Climate is the average of a string of ‘weather’ cycles. So if we have several decades of increasing temperature averages the climate is warming. It is possible for a large area to have a minor climate change because of some unusual event. The little ice age some readers refer to was such an event. Although it should be considered ‘weather’ because of its duration, it did affect a couple of cycles. It occurred because the stratosphere was filled with volcanic ash and gases. The effect was mostly in the Northern Hemisphere.

Today’s concern is rapidly increasing global temperatures which are increasing faster than predicted because of methane. Methane is stored in the arctic permafrost. It is thirty times more powerful than CO2 in holding radiant heat. That is why the Arctic’s temperature increase is twice as fast as much of the rest of the planet. The Arctic permafrost is melting faster every year. It is the reason why year around polar shipping routes will happen in a few years.

Humans drill into the earth, bring up methane, and pipe it into our houses where we burn it creating CO2. If all the fossil fuels were left in the ground, we wouldn’t be looking at a steamy end of humanity.

Lies, Gaffes, or Manipulation

27 Tuesday Aug 2019

Posted by in Stock Market

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            Several decades ago federal laws were passed to keep people from manipulating markets. One way this was being done was to drive up costs by cornering the market, reducing the supply, and then slowly selling their supply at a far greater price than the original cost. The Bunker brothers did this with silver in the 1970s.

            Another way to manipulate the market is by saying something which is untrue causing a stock or the market, as a whole, to move in the desired direction. For instance someone could short a drug stock and tell people a promising drug trial was a disaster causing the stock to fall. Doing the opposite would cause the stock to rise. If the manipulating information was a lie then it was illegal and the SEC could levy fines and restrictions. Federal and State Attorney Generals might file criminal charges too.

            Market manipulation harms investors is when you and I are duped by the criminal actions. Market manipulation is being done on a massive scale today by our President. Yesterday, as in the past, Trump has made false statements to get the stock market to recover from previous gaffes or lies. He said the Chinese had contacted him, his staff at the G-7 meeting knew nothing about any call nor did the Chinese negotiators, and said they wanted to change their position. The Market rose.

            When the President says things that lower the market, some people make money. When it goes back up with another statement more money is made. He often meets with hedge fund people who make billions in the market and heavily support him. Don’t you wonder if there is a quid pro quo connection?