Category Archives: General Interest

December 28, 2022 · 1:58 pm

Thoughts after the storm

Greetings from southeast GA.

It’s 61 degrees Fahrenheit here and we’re supposed to be looking at the freezing weather in the rearview mirror now, so I’m going to do a bit of my own personal “lessons learned.” Although I didn’t face any cold-related problems, I did worry about family in other parts of the country. Some have been very sick. Some don’t really worry much about emergency preparedness and this morning I’ve been browsing cold weather car emergency items to send to granddaughters who live in IN, who have cars and drive.

I moved a few plants from outside into my sun room before the storm, pictured above and I have some plants on my front porch that I’ve covered with a sheet (some have some frost damage and some seem fine).

I live in a home in a residential area in southeast GA, that was built in 1994 and we bought it in 1994. While generally I have liked having electric heat, when bad weather happens and now with all the warnings in America about potential grid failures or rolling blackouts, I have some concerns.

There’s a fireplace in my living room that I do not use in the winter, because most years it’s not really cold enough here to use a fireplace regularly and the other issue is my home’s layout is not conducive for a fireplace to be helpful as regular heating. The living room gets nice and toasty, but with that fireplace heat radiating down the hallway, where the thermostat is located, the electric heat doesn’t kick on and the bedrooms and bathrooms become iceboxes. I also choose not to have a wood pile, because it would just be a termite magnet here, considering I don’t use my fireplace. So, I have several boxes of fire logs in my garage, in case of emergency. With this storm I purchased a Big Buddy propane heater to have too. I didn’t need to use either during this deep freeze, because my power did not go out. However, I did run a small portable electric heater in my bathroom to warm it up more before taking showers. Like, I said, no real drama or struggles at my house.

I have a little butane stove to use to heat food and water, in case of emergency, plus a gas grill on my patio and I have a small charcoal grill and bags of charcoal in my garage. I’ve got food and water stocked too and blankets galore. I wasn’t worrying about freezing to death in my home, but I did think about some other things that I should do to be better prepared next time – things I’ve been putting off.

One thing I did before this storm was check the insulation on my AC/heat condenser outside and the outside faucets. I replaced the insulation on my condenser, because it was old and damaged. I bought outdoor faucet covers at Lowe’s and put them on. In 2018, we had a little snow and some unusual freezing temps here too and one morning my pipes were frozen. I hadn’t left a little stream of water running inside, but I learned my lesson. Luckily, I didn’t have any pipes burst, I had plenty of bottled water and the power was on. If we hadn’t had plenty of bottled water, the situation would have been a real problem. Stores here close at the first hint of bad weather and bottled water sells out before storms. I would have had to go to neighbors and ask for water, because it took almost a whole day for the pipes to thaw.

However, I waited from 2018 until weather forecasts in 2022, before a major storm, to purchase outdoor faucet covers, that cost around $4 each. I’ve got some other emergency preparedness things I want to do and instead of procrastinating, I need to get moving and take care of them.

I’m used to family making fun of me and my emergency preparedness efforts, because my husband and kids used to do that before storms, when I would check flashlight batteries and get them out to have ready. They all used those flashlights when the power did go out. Now, our cell phones have flashlights, which is handy, but I still have flashlights and emergency lanterns.

There are some things I want to do to be better prepared, but I have been thinking about family/friends who make fun of “preppers” and also a few things I saw online. With the people who make fun of “preppers” and don’t do a single thing to be prepared themselves, well, all I can say is a “Doomsday prepper” likely has plenty of food, water, a way to keep their home warm and medical supplies, so that even if illness left them “stranded” and unable to venture out – they would have the basics to manage.

I want to try to say this without picking on anyone or being too critical, but here’s the thing – too many people (I’ve been guilty of this too) procrastinate too much. I saw a very nice guy on YT (in the Deep South) talking about their power going off and using a fireplace, but he mentioned tearing apart wood pallets the day before to have for firewood. It’s good he did that, but the day before is cutting it close and I can understand not keeping a wood pile down here, because I don’t keep a wood pile either. What’s way worse is people who live in areas of the country that get snow and freezing weather every winter, yet don’t bother with being prepared for emergency power outages or other winter weather emergencies.

With the economy predicted to worsen in 2023, getting personal finances in order should be on all of our to-do lists. Here’s another procrastination story. I thought about eliminating personal debt for years, but my husband and I didn’t do it. When he was placed on hospice care in January 2020, I was scared and I decided to pay off all of our debt, besides the mortgage. Once I committed to that, it took me a little over a year to pay off all the debt and then I debated for months about paying off the house completely after my husband passed away. I paid it off and I’m glad that I did. I’ve thought many times that we should have done that years ago. How you go about getting your finances in order may be different than how other people do it, but stopping the excuse-making and rationalizations for why you haven’t done it is the first big hurdle.

A lot of times we make up excuses for ourselves to fall back on for why we haven’t made the changes we know we should have made long ago. I’ve been guilty of this so many times myself and I’m trying to just focus on getting started and doing things rather than making up excuses for why I haven’t done a single thing yet or worrying about being called a crazy prepper. The people who do absolutely nothing to get their finances in order or take seriously preparing before a major storm are assuming someone else will come rescue them if there’s an emergency. During hurricane Ian in FL this year and winter storm Elliott this past week, the truth is in a lot of the hardest hit areas, emergency responders couldn’t respond in the midst of the storm. They can’t come help you.

We all have a responsibility to our families and ourselves to be better prepared rather than being lazy and expecting someone else to rescue us. Responsibility – now there’s a word that seems antiquated these days…

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December 28, 2022 · 12:54 am

Would you take a stranger into your home?

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December 25, 2022 · 10:39 am

Merry Christmas!

Image courtesy of https://discover.hubpages.com/holidays/vintagechristmasimages

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December 24, 2022 · 6:30 am

Some cold weather survival info

I found this video by The Provident Prepper YouTube channel very interesting and worthwhile:

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December 20, 2022 · 12:30 pm

Figuring out the “there” you want to get to.

I love sayings and quotes, especially random ones that I find in packaging, like inside Chines fortune cookies. I didn’t expect sayings on Splenda packets though, but lo and behold this 400-count box of Splenda packets comes with sayings.

People seem to fight about everything online and since I have my own strong opinions about many things too – I’ve been guilty of kicking up a little bit of controversy a few times too. However, I’m trying to avoid that, but yes, I’m aware I’m a contrarian by nature, lol.

The above Splenda packet came in a 400-count box that was given to me. In fact, I was gifted two 400-count boxes of Splenda packets that were given to me by my son’s friend, who had received them by mistake in a Walmart grocery pick-up order. She hadn’t ordered them and when she tried to return them to the store, they told her they don’t take returns on pick-up orders. These boxes are over $14 each, so that store lost almost $30 on that employee error, so it’s a crazy policy, I think.

With my using a Splenda packet saying, online some people would automatically want to start focusing on their views on Splenda being an unhealthy sweetener and why I shouldn’t use it, while I was merely amused by the sayings on these packets. And yes, I am using Splenda packets in my hot tea and oatmeal, because it doesn’t elevate my blood sugar like sugar does. I also use stevia and I’ve heard monkfruit is a good sugar alternative too, but it’s expensive and I haven’t tried it yet. I’m open to trying alternative sweeteners, but I also don’t get invested in all the health food drama in America and all the word games that come with the marketing of “healthy” stuff. I found this saying amusing, but let’s be honest you’ve got to define “there” in journeys or you’ll probably start down some wrong paths and have to make a lot of U-turns. Words can be tricky and the emotions we invest in words even trickier.

Most people around the world don’t have access to goods like we do in America or the myriad of consumer goods and widespread availability of food that we still have. And yes, there are growing shortage issues and inflation here that are dramatically impacting many American homes, but by and large, we still have way more that is available than most parts of the world have ever had. Plus if you live in constant dire financial straits, well, most often in America those situations are due to bad personal decisions, not because of some unexpected event or emergency. Sorry, that’s the truth. Once you get to the truth about people’s financial decisions, especially things like debt to income ratio and looking closely at personal spending habits, often there are things like cigarettes, alcohol, junk food, fast food, lottery tickets, even junk items from dollar stores, etc. that give a clearer picture of personal finances. I’m not trying to bash any particular person or group of people, all I’m saying is most household budgets contain some choices that indicate there were other, more economical, paths to take. The figuring out where you are matters before you decide on the “there” you want to go. That’s where I prefer to start – thinking about a plan of some sort.

While there really are some disturbing major crises unfolding around the world that are likely to impact everyone, including all of us in America, like everything else the impacts are likely to vary widely in severity, depending what country you live in and even regionally or based on personal lifestyle choices and events. For instance the other day I bought an 18-count carton of large eggs at the grocery store for $6.38 and that was definitely sticker shock for me, but I decided to buy the carton, because I want to make some deviled eggs for Christmas. I don’t use that many eggs really and I have a pack of Bob’s Red Mill egg replacer and some whole dried eggs in my food storage, so I have other options for most other egg needs. I also had the choice, of course, to not make deviled eggs. I don’t know of any alternative way to make deviled eggs without fresh whole eggs, so I paid the $6.38.

With the blog posts I’ve written about emergency preparedness, I’ve felt that while I disagree with so much of the constant stream of online preparedness hysteria and fearmongering, assuredly the people who engage in that constantly would likely insist they want to motivate people to prepare and that they’re sharing important information and not fearmongering. Despite my disagreeing with the fearmongering approach, the truth is people who have taken some steps toward getting their finances in better shape, stocking up food and supplies, learned even a few skills are way better off in a crisis than people who haven’t even thought about emergency preparedness at all. That single truth is what I’ve been thinking about with a major winter storm, replete with Arctic temperatures and high wind, forecast to impact a large section of the US later this week.

Considering it’s Christmas time, millions of Americans will likely be traveling too and it’s also likely most won’t make any preparations for winter weather emergencies. That’s been mostly what I’ve seen over the years, even when people do have advance warning of an impending emergency situation.

Fear can be a powerful motivator to prod people into action, because as my Splenda packet says: the best way to get there is to START. The problem comes in that living in constant fear only works for a short time. To stay motivated and committed to being prepared requires both a mind-set and a lifestyle change, not living in a state of fear or anxiously waiting for a SHTF event to hit. It’s not all about buying supplies on a list, but more about a way of thinking, decision-making and overall lifestyle. You can’t buy your way to developing a preparedness mind-set, but the toss side of that is even modest preparedness efforts can reap big rewards, provide you with more options, but most of all it can buy you more time to come up with more solutions in an emergency situation.

Where I live we’re expected to get some freezing temperatures and perhaps some rain, but I ran to Lowe’s to pick up a few items yesterday. I asked an employee for assistance in finding an item. I told this young man I wanted to do a few things around my house to prepare for the storm that’s headed across most of the US later this week. He said he wasn’t aware there was a big storm coming. I asked him a question about a product and he started to tell me his neighbor is sort of a crazy Doomsday prepper type guy, but knows a lot, as he explained something to me. I laughed and told him that my kids think I’m sort of a crazy Doomsday prepper too. The neighbor, who is likely to be where this young man goes for help in an emergency, was labeled with the negative pejorative “Doomsday prepper type.” The truth though is this nice young man had no clue about a major weather event that’s going to impact the US this week. I expect most Americans are like this young man and think prepping is stupid or people who try to be more prepared are weirdos.

Media is largely responsible for creating that negative stereotype of emergency preparedness, by hyping the most extreme preppers and promoting that “Doomsday prepper” labeling. In this April 2022 article, This is the surprising generation least likely to have even $1,000 in savings — and here’s what they need to do about it, it states:

“A survey of 1,000 adults from Bankrate this year revealed that 56% couldn’t pay for even a $1,000 emergency from their savings account. Meanwhile, data from the Federal Reserve showed that when faced with a hypothetical expense of $400, only about two in three adults could pay that expense using cash or its equivalent. What’s more, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau found in 2022 that 24% of consumers have no savings at all set aside for emergencies, while 39% have less than a month of income saved for emergencies.”

According to the USDA, around 10% of Americans were food insecure at some point during 2021.

While I don’t agree with a lot the drama and hysteria I see within the online prepper community, I still think the focus should be on trying to get more unprepared people to take some steps toward being more prepared and not so much focus on the most extreme “Doomsday preppers.” I had a neighbor come to my door in the past month needing some food, which I gladly provided. I’m going to take them a food basket this week too, because there are two small children in the home. I suspect there are people all over America, especially elderly people, who might be in need of some help and that’s where I think the focus should be – not on labeling people.

Without getting into politics much, I’ve always been very conservative and several years ago, one of my adult kids was telling me that she describes me to friends as sort of a “militia-type right-winger – without the guns.” I was sort of dumbstruck and appalled by that description and I was thinking, “This is what my own child thinks of me?” Then Trump came along and I was NeverTrump really, because I believed all along he’s a phony, not conservative in the least and just playing on the fears of a lot of poor Americans, especially poor white people. Trump was a NY liberal, whose golfing buddy was Bill Clinton, so I never got on the Trump train and I guess that spared me somewhat from being cast into “The Deplorables” basket. Now the targeting has moved to labeling everyone on the right as “MAGA Republicans” and I guess just about everyone who runs afoul of the liberal political views will be cast into the MAGA Republican group of “undesirables.” Which brings me back to the “Doomsday prepper” labeling, which came about by the liberal media…

What I really believe, as my core beliefs, has nothing whatsoever to do with politics. I believe in trying to help other people and treat other people as I would like to be treated.

Yes, inflation is supposed to get worse in the coming year and more and more people are likely going to be struggling, even in America. I want to focus on helping my family, friends and others people as I can, not on politics or dividing America into hostile camps. That’s the “there” I want to get to and perhaps most of us might be on board with that as a place to START.

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December 3, 2022 · 4:09 pm

ESG ain’t going away

This is going to be a post about politics – specifically ESG and I want to connect a few dots. ESG has been talked about a lot and among the right it’s sort of become like a shorthand term for “evil corporations,” but that completely misses the point. Corporations didn’t just decide to adopt ESG, which stands for environmental, social, and corporate governance out of thin air.

ESG came about out of UN initiatives. In 2004 the UN formed the UN Global Compact, so this goes back to when George W. Bush was president and the US and major US banks, investment corporations and large corporations have been on board with all of this since the beginning. None of this ESG agenda would be happening in America without the full support and prodding of the US government. This is true around the world – the UN agenda from this 2004 UN Global Compact, where the term ESG was first used, to the 2015 UN Agenda 2030, which lays out an ambitious 2030 timeline to transform the world into an environmentally, sustainable utopia, where equitable governance is universal was signed onto by almost every country in the world.

In 2004 this Global Compact report came out: Who Cares Wins: Connecting Financial Markets to a Changing World. On the title page here’s the blurb at the bottom:

“Endorsed by:
ABN Amro • Aviva • AXA Group • Banco do Brasil • Bank Sarasin • BNP Paribas • Calvert Group • CNP Assurances
Credit Suisse Group • Deutsche Bank • Goldman Sachs • Henderson Global Investors • HSBC • IFC • Innovest
The Global
Compact
ISIS Asset Management • KLP Insurance • Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance • Morgan Stanley • RCM • UBS • Westpac • World Bank Group”

This ESG effort isn’t just about “woke companies” promoting American leftist policies; it’s a global effort, endorsed by almost every country in the world – including the United States. That’s why all these silly right-wing reactionary antics about “ESG” and “woke companies” is rather pointless, in my opinion. Every major US corporation has had to get on-board with the ESG agenda, because all of the big investment firms and banks have adopted this ESG agenda – since the early 2000s.

So, let’s fast forward a few years to 2015, the year the UN adopted Agenda 2030 – here’s the link to that: https://sdgs.un.org/2030agenda.

I don’t want to ramble on a lot about my personal feelings or thoughts about ESG or Agenda 2030 or the WEF & Klaus Schwab, because my intention with this post is to draw awareness to how ESG and “woke companies” aren’t acting alone – they embarked on this, because most governments around the world are 100% behind this effort, including the United States of America, and the ones that aren’t 100% are being pressured to pay lip service to it, or face having investment and development aid being cut off.

I came across this June 2020 Forbes article, Demystifying ESG: Its History & Current Status, which provides a lot of details on why we started hearing so much about ESG since 2020 – and that’s about the acceleration effort proposed by the World Economic Forum crowd, to use the global pandemic economic turmoil as an opportunity to speed up the global transformation goals in Agenda 2030. This is what Klaus Schwab, the founder of the WEF termed – The Great Reset.

Right-wing pundit media types started blabbing about The Great Reset and ESG a lot in the past two years, but they’re so far behind at really grasping that governments around the world, including the US, the UN and major financial and investment corporations, have been laying the groundwork and implementing these policies since the early 2000s and by the time the UN adopted Agenda 2030 – in 2015 – major corporations and banks around the world were already on board completely.

People on the right getting on their high horse saying they’re going to boycott this or that company, because of ESG or “woke policies” really completely shows a lack of reality – almost everyone lives within these systems and relies on goods and services from major corporations and/or the government, which are fully invested in advancing the ESG goals. There isn’t any easy opt-out option for any of us – that’s the bottom-line.

Anyone who thinks that getting angry about something and coming up with a quick reaction – like “I’m done shopping there or there or there!” is going to deter or stop a major global effort that’s been underway for almost 20 years and backed by almost every country and major corporation in the world is delusional. Everyone will have to decide for themselves how much they’re willing to go along to get along in this situation, just like during the pandemic. I resented some of those policies too, but I also need to see my doctor and have tests done sometimes that required me to comply with rules, I didn’t agree with. I’m not judging other people for the choices they make or what they believe about the pandemic, the environmental issues or any of the so-called “woke” agenda, because frankly, there’s so much bad information in the news and social media environment that it’s a total wasteland.

I have my own thoughts on how, if things spiral out of control with the Great Reset in too many places in the world, that could propel many rapid changes to occur, but like everyone else, I don’t have a crystal ball. ESG ain’t going away – that’s the reality.

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November 29, 2022 · 11:14 pm

Small beginnings are within reach

I started a blog post the day after Thanksgiving and despite editing and rewriting parts of it, I decided not to publish it, because it wasn’t quite expressing what I wanted to say. I became interested in becoming better prepared in 2020, mainly out of fear when my husband was placed on home hospice care and within weeks of that the pandemic craziness hit.

I’d always stocked up extra supplies and food, but I felt assuredly there were “experts” who know a lot more than I do. That’s when I started viewing YouTube prepper videos. I’d been watching homesteading videos for a long time too and that goes with my interest in learning about how people grow food and manage living off of small farms or village life around the world. When my husband and I were first married I told him my dream was to live on a small farm out in the country. We never tried farming and I likely won’t ever live on a small farm in the country, but I enjoy watching other people who have embarked on that adventure.

I’ve been watching an Azerbaijani lady cook food over open fire outside for years and even before I found that channel, I watched a grandma cook in her village in Sri Lanka. A few African village life channels popped up in my feed recently and I’ve watched a few of those too. The biggest takeaway is people do manage with a lot less, they take pride in talking about their lives and sharing native dishes. I’ve learned a lot watching these videos and there’s absolutely no drama, the people seem warm, friendly and excited to share their culture. Unlike so much of the sky-is-falling drama that permeates many of the American prepper and homesteading channels, these people living with so much less, seem more emotionally stable, calm and happy.

When I came across the William Bradford quote for Thanksgiving, the “out of small beginnings greater things have been produced” phrase stuck in my head. Bradford was a Puritan, who sailed to America on the Mayflower and became the governor of the Plymouth Colony, when the first governor, John Carver, died during the early months establishing the colony. Out of the 103 Mayflower passengers and around 30 crew on the ship, about half of them died during that 1620 voyage and first winter in America.

The Mayflower voyage went off course and the Pilgrims ended up reaching land much further north than planned, in November of 1620. They were running low on supplies and totally unprepared for the cold, hard winter there.

The first Thanksgiving was a 3-day harvest celebration in 1621. Although, those first settlers survived their first year in America, daily life was grueling, devoid of luxuries, and uncertain. Life in some parts of the world is still that way. I doubt any of the early American settlers could ever have imagined that out of their small beginnings, our United States of America would grow into a great and prosperous nation.

While we are facing some shortages now, Americans were facing all kinds of shortages, including food shortages, from the first settlers and there were years of failing crops, wheat shortages, and other shortages many times in American history, yet people couldn’t run to Costco or Walmart and try to stock up. They learned to make-do during wheat shortages with what they had and used substitutions, like barley, oats, corn to make bread.

Interestingly, while it’s easy to presume early settlers were all made of sterner stuff than people today and had some sort of unique survival skills, the truth is they were just people too. Their daily lives involved a great deal more hard labor and lack of physical comforts, so from an early age daily life required self-discipline, following a daily routine, and a sense of commitment. The Puritans had already moved from England to the Netherlands to avoid religious persecution, before embarking on the Mayflower voyage. Daily life in England and the Netherlands in the 1600s, was a far cry from arriving in America, where they were facing an uncertain situation with the Native Americans and an inhospitable land.

We all are products of the times we live in and as times change people adapt and change too, but even back in early America, some people didn’t cope well and they had all the same human emotions we have today.

William Bradford’s wife, Dorothy, died while Bradford was on his third scouting trip on land, as the other passengers stayed on the Mayflower, awaiting their return. She fell overboard and drowned while the Mayflower was moored in the harbor. Some historians question whether she committed suicide. There were passengers dying all around her and they had left their three-year old son behind in Amsterdam, with Dorothy’s parents.

Nathaniel Philbrick, in his book, Mayflower, wrote: “We think of the Pilgrims as resilient adventurers upheld by unwavering religious faith, but they were also human beings in the middle of what was, and continues to be, one of the most difficult emotional challenges a person can face: immigration and exile. Less than a year later, another group of English settlers arrived in Provincetown Harbor and were so overwhelmed by this “naked and barren place” that they convinced themselves that the Pilgrims must all be dead. In fear of being forsaken by the ship’s captain, the panicked settlers began to strip the sails from the yards “lest the ship should get away and leave them.” (pages 76-77)

Most of us adjust and learn as we face challenges, just as the Pilgrims did. Some people, even back then, fared better than others, but none of the first settlers in America, nor the Native Americans, already here, lived an easy life filled with comfort items and luxuries that we take for granted. However, we can all, little by little, choose to learn new skills and face new challenges with a positive spirit and small beginnings that produce greater things are still attainable, no matter what the latest shortage being hyped or online drama.

I watched a video the other day where the couple grew a dry corn variety this year and they ground some up and made cornbread. I found that very interesting. I bought a cookbook, Country Beans, earlier this year (used for under $6 on amazon), which explains a multitude of ways to use dry beans, peas and lentils, including making flour out of them. Each little bit of information I acquire and each little experiment learning new techniques and ways to use food, or even my small gardening effort, feels like time better spent than getting worked up about world crises or the latest hot topic flitting across social media.

We can all assuredly embark on a few small beginnings, just looking through our homes and pantries and trying to find new ways to use the things we already have. Unlike the early settlers we have access to information almost instantly. There are even apps available that can identify wild plants and trees with the snap of a photo on your phone. There is more information on ways to use almost any food than any of us can ever possibly use. Truly, we still live in a land of abundance here in America and I am thankful for that every day.

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November 24, 2022 · 9:42 am

Happy Thanksgiving!

“Thus out of small beginnings greater things have been produced by His hand that made all things of nothing, and gives being to all things that are; and, as one small candle may light a thousand, so the light here kindled hath shone unto many…”

https://reasonsforhopejesus.com/a-thanksgiving-day-meditation/

Image from: https://thegraphicsfairy.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Thanksgiving-Grace-Image-GraphicsFairy.jpg

The past couple years the world has seemed turned upside down at times. As Americans celebrate Thanksgiving Day this year, we have an opportunity to join with family and friends, share good food, old stories and take some time to express gratitude for all the blessings in our lives.

It’s very easy in the midst of all the bad news swirling all about us every day to lose sight of the many good things.

Today’s a good day to try to leave the rancorous politics and the doom and gloom economic news aside. Smile, laugh, share a bit of hope. We can all try to be a small candle for those around us.

Have a safe and very Happy Thanksgiving!

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November 13, 2022 · 9:29 am

Following more money trails.

This past week’s election in America was a stunning victory if you’re a Democrat and a total disaster if you’re Republican – thus far. We still don’t know which party will control the US House of Representatives, but Democrats will keep control of the US Senate.

A few states had election drama with vote-counting again, especially AZ, NV, and CA is very slow too, I’ve seen some right-wing commentary about “stolen election” in AZ from the Trump camp again, but here’s the thing Republicans controlled the legislature and the governorship in AZ before this election. NV, though, was controlled by Democrats, and of course, CA is a Democrat stronghold. This post is going to be about politics and specifically about Trump and the MAGA movement, with a look back to the beginning of Trump’s political career and what I expect.

Former President Trump was floating the “stolen election” spin again, which isn’t surprising since he’s conned his followers into believing in “stolen elections” as a matter of faith – without ever producing any real proof. Then right-wing media starts spinning up Trump’s spin garbage and in the blink of an eye, Trump supporters are all-in on the next Trump spin lie. Due to the endless Trump Show, where Democrats and liberals have lost their minds trying to destroy Trump and Trump supporters have embraced Trump as the only path to “Making America Great Again,” America’s been locked in this same political drama since 2015. Many of his ardent supporters trust in him completely and while there’s been some backlash on the right against Trump for attacking FL governor, Ron DeSantis, after DeSantis scored a stunning victory in FL last week, I expect not much will change in Washington and not much will change with Trump right now.

I fully expect FOX News pundits will be back to being all-in for Trump quickly, despite a few days of criticism of Trump for attacking Ron DeSantis. FOX News has tried to break up with Trump before, but since most of their audience are Trump followers, they always reverse course quickly. And during these rocky periods Trump starts attacking FOX News for its negative coverage and hunting other right-wing news media to sell his Trump Show, without any criticisms. Trump supporters always point out that Trump is unfairly attacked by the left, especially liberal media and it’s certainly true, a whole lot of liberal media sounds like Trump Derangement Syndrome and now even attacking Trump supporters as “MAGA Republicans,” but they’re not the only ones stuck in derangement. Many Trump supporters completely buy into all of this labeling everyone on the right who dares criticize Trump as a RINO or supporting the GOP establishment and Swamp in DC.

During this latest little FOX News/Trump rocky patch, Trump was busy posting statements about it and on November 10th, here’s what he posted:

“If CNN were smart, they’d open up a Conservative network, only have me on, and it would be the most successful network in History. Fox only made it because of me, Twitter only made it because of me, and even Facebook is now in the tubes, having lost almost $90 billion in value since I was taken off, which was considered one of the biggest mistakes in business over the last two years, because with Trump go tens of millions of people who believe in MAGA, who want to Make America Great Again, and Put America First!”

Trump hates CNN and they’re evil, but there’s Trump floating a CNN conservative network that would only have him on. He’s that confident MAGA Republicans are so loyal to him and that he can keep lying to them and conning them forever. Sure harkens back to Trump’s comment way back when, about his followers being so loyal he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and they’d remain loyal. I suspect many of them have bought into Trump’s con game that much and would happily even follow Trump to enriching “Fake News CNN.”

Trump’s MAGA-selected candidates have been a total electoral disaster – he picked these people only because they were willing to spout his “stolen election” bs.

Tucker Carlson had on Blake Masters Friday night and Masters, a MAGA candidate, with no political experience, lost his senate race to Democrat incumbent, Mark Kelly in the AZ senate race. Masters was spouting the latest Trump spin, blaming Mitch McConnell for his loss, The failure of these MAGA candidates, that Trump promoted, is supposedly all Mitch McConnell’s fault for not pouring money into his campaign and it’s a Trumpworld talking point to rail against McConnell for putting money into Lisa Murkowski’s race against the Trump-backed candidate. That’s the thing – to win national races it’s much more successful to get incumbents re-elected than it is to get people with no political record elected. McConnell, despite Trump attacking him constantly and Dems pouring millions into Amy McGrath, won his reelection by 20 points. He knows a bit more about elections than Trump, that’s for sure, who won 2016 by a fluke, with Hillary being so bogged down by scandals and being a particularly awful candidate, added to which Trump had benefitted mightily from that billions of dollars of free media during the GOP primary. The mythical “GOP Insurgent” Dems and liberal media created in the GOP primary came back to haunt them in the general. And McConnell knows more about how the US Senate operates than Blake Masters. The truth is McConnell-aligned PACs poured way more money into Trump-backed candidates in the general election than Trump did:

“McConnell-aligned super PACs — including SLF, American Crossroads and Faith & Power PAC — have invested a whopping $238 million so far in seven key Senate races. How much has Donald Trump spent? He has raised an eye-watering $161 million this election cycle. But his super PAC, Make America Great Again, Inc., has spent a grand total of . . . $14.8 million on Senate races. To put that in perspective, MAGA Inc.’s total spending across the country is less than McConnell-aligned PACs have spent in any individual race in which they are engaged.”

https://www.news-journal.com/opinion/mcconnells-pacs-put-money-where-trumps-mouth-is/article_f81a8e4e-5e27-11ed-8053-5740bc1e4414.html

With Murkowski -it made sense to back an incumbent rather than engage in the reckless and stupid Trump purges of the GOP, trying to rid the GOP of anyone who doesn’t march in lock-step with Trump and kiss his butt. Blake Masters is another one of those Trump-backed candidates with no political experience and in fact, he has no experience of even being a Republican – just like Trump, yet, he’s demanding that McConnell must go. Love him or hate him, McConnell, has been very effective as Senate leader, and has gotten a whole lot of conservative judges confirmed AND has put decades into the GOP – even back when Trump was a NY liberal spending his time with his golfing buddy, Bill Clinton. Since 2015, I’ve believed that Trump entering that race was a Dem dirty trick, so there’s my conspiracy theory.

Why should a guy who lost his Senate race be the person demanding Mitch McConnell be replaced? I’m not even a McConnell fan, but I’m sick to death of the Trump’s lies and endless Trump war against the GOP. Trump has torn the GOP apart and besides his fluke win in 2016, he’s led the GOP to nothing but losses and constant battles against RINOs and the GOPe. Living in GA, I’m sick to death of Trump’s efforts to tear the GOP apart here and I am glad Brian Kemp won a huge victory over Stacy Abrams – DESPITE Trump trying to destroy Kemp. Where’s the anger among MAGA over Trump trying to tear down popular Republicans running for re-election, only because they wouldn’t kiss Trump’s butt? Nope, they’re being led to blame Mitch McConnell for the losses.

Trump’s already fundraising using the Hershel Walker run-off in GA:

Trump automatically gets 90% of those donations he’s raising for Hershel Walker, unless the donor clicks to change that – another Trump grift.

I fully expect Trump and his right-wing media echo-chamber to keep attacking Mitch McConnell, keep lying, and claim the defeat of Trump’s MAGA candidates, even with the terrible economy, was McConnell’s fault and at the same time con his supporters into believing the election wasn’t really that bad and many of them will keep sending Trump money.

I’m a “follow the money person,” because things become clearer when you take a close look at money trails.

A close family member pointed out to me that the Dems poured millions into promoting these extreme MAGA candidates in the primaries, trying to absolve Trump of blame and I reminded her that these candidates wouldn’t have even gotten any traction without Trump endorsing them in the first place. Trump put them in play. The ironic thing is this is exactly what the Democrats did in 2015 too – Bill Clinton ‘Encouraged’ Trump to Run. I still believe that the “GOP Insurgent” was a Democrat-concocted dirty trick that went awry. Trump wasn’t expected to win – just disrupt the 2016 GOP primary.

In 2019, Howard Stern, another Trump crony, who hung out at Trump’s home in FL: Howard Stern: Trump’s candidacy for president was a ‘publicity stunt’ I bring this up, because Dems pouring money on the worst possible candidates in this election is exactly what happened in 2015 too.

Here’s a Nov. 2016 piece: Donald Trump Rode $5 Billion in Free Media to the White House. A large chunk of that money was from liberal media – like CNN and MSNBC, where Trump friends, Joe and Mika had Trump calling in interviews on their show, while demanding other Republican primary candidates had to show up in the studio. CNN and MSNBC were also airing Trump rallies, in their entirety – live. They were conning right-wing America into buying into Trump – “the fighter,” “the great businessman,” “the GOP Insurgent,” while sitting on mountains of dirt about Trump – which they unleashed by late 2015, when Trump became a real threat to Hillary. It was all a Dem dirty trick in the beginning, I believe.

So many Trump-supporters believe in Trump as much as Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker’s supporters believed in them. Those Bakker supporters sent them millions of dollars too. Until enough Trump supporters realize this has all been a huge grift, Trump will remain a powerful force in the GOP and American politics.

I expect Trump to announce his 2024 run this coming week, FOX News will be back to selling Trump as the only GOP hope in 2024, and I expect most of his followers will buy into blaming McConnell and RINOs and GOPe, rather then realize Trump and Democrats pushing these loser MAGA candidates in the GOP primaries is how the GOP got saddled with so many bad candidates and why they lost.

If you’re wondering why Biden and Schumer were hyping J-6 and the threat of MAGA Republicans for months, while downplaying the economic problems, well, wonder no more – it was part of this promote the worst MAGA candidates in the GOP primaries, then pivot and only talk about what a threat they are in the general election (same strategy they used in 2016). I think they probably felt confident that very few of these MAGA candidates could make it across the finish line and with Trump it was guaranteed the GOP would remain in turmoil constantly. He wants the GOP purged of every Republican who isn’t 100% loyal to him.

Trump still has great appeal among his base and so many of them will believe everything he says, plus, unlike these losing MAGA candidates this past week – Trump actually beat the Democrats at their own corrupt spin game once and because of that he remains a potent threat to Democrats and their liberal media mouthpieces – as long as he has some big media selling him.

More to come for sure. Btw, Jim and TammyFaye had little old ladies living on fixed incomes sending them money for years, until they were exposed as frauds and I expect that until people realize that Trump has conned them and is really the guy who loved hanging out with people like Howard Stern and golfing with Bill Clinton, not hanging around working class MAGA people, the era of Trump will continue.

I am totally done with Donald J. Trump.

Update: Well, I decided to add a bit more, because here’s the truth – Trump brought the Dem/liberal media brand of spin information war to the GOP and turned the GOP into an entrenched civil war zone of Trump vs The RINOs/GOPe and has made the party largely dysfunctional. However, while the Dems and liberal media are gloating and celebrating, the other part is they are totally committed to this destructive spin information war and this election will energize them to further escalate the balkanization of America and expand their culture war. Americans will become further radicalized in the process – on both sides. As a conservative, I had hoped for wins on the right in this election, but it’s way more than the outcome of this election that concerns me – it’s the lying and constant manipulation of Americans by this 24/7 media spin war.

While Dems and liberal media politicized how they define “disinformation” and used it as a bludgeon against Trump and Republicans – disinformation is a real problem. First I’m going to mention the problem with clueless media analysts given high profiles.

A lot of right-wing media attention focused on the US Senate race in PA, where Democrats fielded John Fetterman, a man seriously impaired from a stroke. Even questioning his fitness for office led to liberal media and Dem attacks about being “ableist” and discriminating against disabled people, when competency for public office is a completely valid concern. The left-wing media is filled with as many nincompoops as analysts as the right-wing media, truthfully. Katy Tur, a MSNBC host was so ecstatic about Fetterman winning that Senate race, that she suggested he could run for President… And, in the current Democratic Party, where Joe Biden is being managed by his wife, that’s entirely possible. It was the complete lack of awareness of how serious it is to have people holding high office, who are mentally unfit for the office, that surprised me and I can see millions of Democrats getting all in on supporting Fetterman, after watching how they pretend Joe Biden doesn’t have any cognitive problems. While many people on the right were stunned about Democrats being willing to push Fetterman, despite knowing he’s unfit for office, is nothing new though – it’s goes back in the Democratic Party all the way to Woodrow Wilson, who had a stroke as president and his wife took over the presidency basically, while the American people were left in the dark and the media covered it up.

Next, there was the problem with liberals embracing Twitter banning right-wing people willy-nilly and basically using that power as a partisan political tool – big tech giants colluding with a partisan faction to silence the other side, all in the name of “fighting disinformation.” A lot of people on the right expected Elon Musk to become the savior of free speech in America. Well, Musk bought Twitter and he initiated some verification process for people to get blue-checkmarks that was not really verifying accounts. Twitter has been flooded with accounts impersonating other people, companies, government officials and many were fake Elon Musk accounts. While it might seem humorous, this, in my view, could quickly turn into a national security problem. Yesterday, I saw a news report about a fake Twitter account for Eli Lilly, a pharmaceutical company, whose stock plunged after a fake Twitter account tweeted: Fake Eli Lilly Twitter Account Claims Insulin Is Free, Stock Falls 4.37%. That supposed verified accounts aren’t actually verified in any way could cause a lot of havoc, so Twitter halted their new verification program. That a fake account could crash major US companies or cause mass panic is not funny.

There isn’t going to be a one step solution to either the spin information war problem or the very real dangers with large social media platforms – both with how much power they have to control information or how risky it is to have no verification or security checks on official social media accounts for officials, companies, organizations, etc.

Corruption problems in politics and with the media are as old as politics and media, actually. What has alarmed me for decades now about this spin information war is how completely this merging of partisan politics and big media has been able to drive and control public opinion in America. However, the more concerning problem is how many people will share, retweet, and believe in information without doing an iota of research, trying to verify the information, or even being skeptical at all.

I’ve been concerned about this expanding spin information war and the divides it fuels for decades now. I opened Twitter this morning and some liberal lady was spewing invective at MAGA voters – not Trump or Republican candidates – she was spewing at Americans who exercised their right to vote however they wanted. That’s the problem – this spin war has radicalized not just our politics, it’s turned a whole lot of Americans into buying into this Us vs. Them way of thinking too. I bitch about how a lot of the Republican base, since Trump, has become addled conspiracy theorists, who buy into even the most wild conspiracy theories now, but this problem is also within the Democrat base too, where many buy into that “MAGA Republicans” are evil people and must be banished from the public square, monitored by the government, etc. – all for having different political views.

As a conservative, I get more riled up about what’s going on in the right-side of politics, but the same radicalization has happened among the left-side. None of it is good for America and as long as this scorched earth spin information war continues to be lucrative for politicians and media – they’re going to keep running with it and that’s the way bigger threat to America than who won or lost in this election. It’s like we’re on a dangerous road with no guardrails. And I’ll end with that.

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November 11, 2022 · 11:51 am

A few Veterans Day reflections

Today is Veterans Day, so every American owes a debt of gratitude to all those who have served and continue to defend our great nation. I had planned to visit the Veterans cemetery today but due to the rain with this tropical storm, I’ll take flowers another day, when the weather clears up.

I ended up tweeting some about politics this morning, but I want to limit how much time I spend on politics Twitter, since I haven’t completely broken the habit. I have gone days without looking at Twitter at all and that’s progress. Another goal is to limit how much politics news I ingest. Trump declared all-out war on Ron DeSantis, apparently, while DeSantis is doing his job as governor and FL deals with another storm. Then apparently, Trump was posting crap on Truth Social, his new social media home, trashing the governor of VA, Glenn Youngkin, saying his name sounds Chinese and spelling it Young-Kin. Yes, that’s how threatened Donald Trump feels, that he wants to destroy any potential 2024 upstarts in the GOP. I say, apparently, because I didn’t verify this information and don’t have an account at Truth Social and don’t want to join anymore social media formats.

That’s it on the politics in this post, because with it being Veterans Day, one of the things I was thinking about was how the US military is now an all-volunteer force, where patriots from all walks of life, decide to serve. The glue that holds our military together are shared values and a dedication to a mission larger than yourself.

While everyone certainly is entitled to their own personal beliefs and views, we can all benefit from regularly taking a step back and looking beyond ourselves and listening to other people’s ideas, views, and beliefs. When my kids were growing up I used to tell them not to judge people based on what they look like, where they live or work, what kind of clothes they wear, etc. I told them if you take the time to get to know people a bit, not what you think you know about them (which is often gossip), that you’re likely to be surprised often when you start getting to know a bit about people and listen more. It’s not uncommon to find that even a guy working at a gas station might have developed an interest in reading Shakespeare or painting, at some point in his life or that some lady working in a store, who came to America from a much poorer country, went to college or developed great skill at some other type of work or craft. Many years ago, when I worked at Walmart, our store had Bulgarian immigrants as the overnight crew that cleaned the store. As I got to know them, I learned that one of the men had been a Bulgarian army officer and another one had been a hospital administrator.

When I joined the Army in 1979, one of the things I loved the most was meeting people from all over America and the world. It was wonderful to be exposed to so many different people, who although coming from completely different places and backgrounds, worked together as one team.

We are all fortunate to have people, who are willing to put aside their differences and commit to a common goal – defending America. We can all spend less time investing in being partisans and more in being Americans. Today is a good day to give a moment’s thought to that.

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