08/18/20

The Riddle of Animals and Small Children

What do animals and small children have in common? They both live in the “NOW.”

Animals and small children live in the present tense, in the immediate moment without a concept of past or future.

Why is this important? Because the radical leftist Democrats and their globalist handlers are attempting to regress chronological adults back to childish thinking where they can be easily manipulated and controlled. It is a sinister and intentional exploitation of the NOW thinking of childhood. It is a psychological operation, a PSYOP.

If you think this is hyperbole or some unhinged conspiracy theory—think again.

To understand how the political regression-PSYOP works we must consider the psychodynamics of fear. An individual’s response to fear can be quantified on a continuum from the response of a young child to the response of a rational adult. The frightened child closes his eyes or hides under a bed in hopes of evading the threat. A child’s response is an instinctive avoidance strategy. The rational adult assesses the danger, considers possible responses, calculates which will likely be the most effective strategy, and then acts on it. The adult’s response requires critical thinking and results in an action strategy.

Thought precedes behavior. So, if a chronological adult can be frightened enough to regress his thinking back to that of a child, he will respond like a child. That is the foundation of the deliberate fear campaign gripping the country today, and the purpose of the political medicine informing the social policy on COVID19.

There are extremes of chronological adult responses on the fear continuum. On one end is an adult so frightened he/she curls up in a fetal position screaming, and on the other end is a Navy SEAL. The continuum dramatizes the psychological component of fear responses. Navy SEALs are not superhuman, they are rational adults who are trained to resist psychological regression under the most dire and extreme circumstances. It is this psychological component that distinguishes who will become a SEAL and who will not.

Now, let’s consider the ongoing hysteria surrounding the coronavirus and its political purpose. First, over 99% of people who get COVID19 recover, so prolonging mandated face masks, social distancing, school closures, and business closures make no rational sense. The policies are not appropriate responses to the threat of COVID19 based on the facts of the matter.

When things don’t make sense, something else is going on. A useful tool for understanding the motive is looking at the result.

Who benefits from the ongoing, extreme COVID19 restrictions? The globalists, of course! The globalists command the war on America and finance the radical leftist Democrats and RINOS attempting to defeat POTUS in November. President Donald Trump is the existential enemy of globalism. His commitment to American sovereignty, a constitutional United States, and his unapologetic America-first policies have strengthened America and weakened globalism for four years.

In particular, Trump’s tariffs on Chinese goods were devastating to the Chinese economy and seriously damaging the profits of globalist companies manufacturing their goods in China. The globalists were desperate. The coronavirus was an economic bioweapon released from Wuhan, China to collapse the U.S. economy and defeat President Trump in November.

Follow the money and the entire strategy becomes clear. The politicization of public health through the NOW lens of animals and small children explains the globalist fear campaign required to promote public fear and regress chronological adults to childish thinking.

The political medicine advanced by the corrupt Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and equally corrupt World Health Organization (WHO) is unconscionable. Its directives only make sense to a psychologically regressed adult. Instead of rejecting the nonsensical politicized medicine of the corrupt CDC and WHO, the regressed public submits. They obediently wear their masks and observe social distancing, naively trusting that the CDC/WHO protocols are necessary to protect them.

Living in the NOW requires immediacy. Needs must be immediately gratified. Children can’t wait. Fear, whether real or manufactured, must be quelled immediately. Critical thinking skills are needed to inform adult decisions. Instead, the regressed population accepts what they are told unquestioningly and hide under the bed. In this instance, they hide behind masks and social distancing hoping the threat will disappear. Their compliance is rewarded with repetitive virtue-signaling assurances that, “We are all in this together,” a particularly manipulative phrase.

The deliberate disinformation and wildly exaggerated mortality projections spread by the CDC and WHO were orchestrated by the globalists who run both organizations. The echoing narratives are political medicine disguised as medical science.

The mainstream media censored globalism’s current and past financial ties to the corrupt CDC and equally corrupt WHO. This deceit facilitated the political regression-PSYOP and its fear campaign. The collaboration has been dangerously successful, but there is still time to outmaneuver the PSYOP.

If Americans understand how and why we have been misled, we can discipline ourselves to reject the manipulative fearmongering. We can remain rational, chronological adults, and defy the regression-PSYOP seeking to return us to childhood compliance.

We must live in the present, but remember our past to envision our future. We have the power to preserve our individual freedoms and reject globalism’s tyranny by rejecting their chosen Democrat and RINO representatives in November. We must aspire to be Navy SEALs and reject the sinister attempts to reduce us to animals or small children.

08/18/20

Kamala Harris: “A Hillary of Color”

By: Thomas Wigand | New Zeal

Kamala Harris and the “’Me Too’ Movement” Present Existential Threats to Each Other

By the title we refer not to their shared, shall we say, elevated b-word quotient. (However fittingly it may apply, the media is under strict orders to avoid such characterizations, or even any hard questioning don’t you know – even as referring to Donald Trump as a “Fascist” or “Nazi” is well within the media mainstream. Other than with select intellectually honest women, the irony is lost on the purveyors of “girl power.”)

Nor do we refer to their shared far Left ideologies. (Hillary being an acolyte of Saul Alinksy and his Rules for Radicals; Harris’ record embracing loony lefty policy positions including, but not limited to the “Green New Deal” and free healthcare for illegal aliens.)

No, we refer here to a shared “Me Too” problem.

Back in the days of semen-stained blue dresses, documented serial adultery and credible rape allegations against “Bill,” there was a commonly held belief that Hillary Rodham Clinton must have remained married to the cad out of her personal ambition – political and otherwise. While we can never know her true motivations, this still seems the most logical and plausible explanation.

It is indisputable that Hillary rode Bill’s coattails into nearly becoming the first female President, and to massive wealth (through legally and ethically questionable means of accumulation).

Yet at the same time, Hillary Rodham Clinton was anointed “feminist” icon – a career-holding, accomplished woman – one who didn’t “need” Bill in order to live a very comfortable lifestyle. She declared that she was no Tammy Wynette “standing by her man.” And no, Hillary was never at risk of just scraping by as “working poor” in one of those trailer parks their campaign manager James Carville demeaned while smearing Paula Jones.

So, a spousal variant of “sleeping your way to the top” credibly applies here.

Amongst the fallout from that “blue dress” era, the “feminist organizations” were exposed as a partisan hacks, not “civil rights” or “equality” advocates. When confronted with a choice of publicly adhering to their declared purposes – equality and respect for women, or not – they cynically and hypocritically sided with the Clintons and against credible women accusers. (Who were, by Progressives overall, given the exact opposite treatment of that later afforded to immeasurably less credible accusers deployed against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.)

A contemporary account (1998) by an intellectually honest woman declared thus:

If feminists had stopped to think of Monica Lewinsky as a real person, it might have slowed them down. The most grotesque aspect of the case is this determination to depict Lewinsky’s end of the alleged affair as liberated, autonomous female sexuality in action, instead of as the pathetic picture it was, of a young woman seeking a dubious affirmation in all the wrong places. To be sure, the May-December romance is always a complex, two-way transaction. But what little we know of the Clinton-Lewinsky relationship suggests that in all of the specifics that matter – when he called, when and where they met, what they actually did with each other, and even when she was allowed to speak to him – the relationship was controlled (duh!) by the powerful, married, 50-ish man, not by the 20-something woman on the lowest rung of the status ladder.

Why do feminists find it so hard to acknowledge the ugliness of this arrangement?

Fast forward to today, and life after the Harvey Weinstein inspired “Me Too” “movement.” Herr Weinstein of the fabled “casting couch” was, it appears, a genuine pig. One who for decades happily oinked amongst the highest echelons of Hollywood and Washington – without objection or repudiation by the Progressive Pooh-Bahs. That is, until casting couches (and other workplace venue equivalents) suddenly became social justice verboten.

Starting in the mid-1990’s, twenties-something Kamala Harris (Kamala) was involved in an affair with (then married) sixties-something Willie Brown (Willie) – at the time, the most powerful political figure in California. No doubt (snark alert) the affair was motivated solely by her being physically attracted to this Social Security age married man, and he attracted to her because of her perky intellect – all made irresistible by true love.

Besides a BMW 7-series, this “true love” netted Kamala multiple six-figure taxpayer financed positions, and entre-plus into California’s Democrat power structure. As SFWeekly reported in 2003:

Aside from handing her an expensive BMW, Brown appointed her to two patronage positions in state government that paid handsomely — more than $400,000 over five years. In 1994, she took a six-month leave of absence from her Alameda County job to join the Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board. Brown then appointed her to the California Medical Assistance Commission, where she served until 1998, attending two meetings a month for a $99,000 annual salary.

Query if those patronage positions also carried with them credit toward a state pension?

In any case, it is fair to say that but-for Willie’s (presumably penile prompted) patronage – and the career trajectory it enabled – Kamala Harris would not now be the Vice Presidential nominee of the Democrat Party. She would have been successful on her own merits, but she would not be at this level.

Just as it is fair to say that Hillary would have been successful on her own merits, but would not have been at her current level had she not ridden Bill Clinton’s coattails.

Which for the “Me Too” advocates, like their “feminist” predecessors, should be the catalyst for some serious self-reflection; indeed some potentially existential questioning. After all, stated principles can become pesky things when they collide with realpolitik. (Avoiding this confrontation no doubt being one of, if not the primary motivation underlying the aforementioned media marching orders.)

Here is a sampling of pertinent (potentially existential) questions that should be publicly answered by the “Me Too” crowd:

Q: Casting-couch type arrangements are mutually beneficial contracts; each party gets something they want. If Willie first propositioned Kamala, and she (obviously) accepted and benefited, is the arrangement (and others like it) still to be condemned?

Q: Would the answer be different if Kamala had been insulted and turned-down Willie’s offer(s) in real time? Would that then have constituted sexual harassment on Willie’s part?

Q: Whereas since we know that she accepted Willie’s offer(s) in real time, does that mean it did not constitute sexual harassment?

Q: What if Kamala willingly accepted Willie’s offer, but says that she now regrets it. Was Willie’s offer acceptable at the time, but now retroactively not acceptable? Is there a “statute of limitations” (of sorts) past which such arrangements cannot be questioned or challenged?

Q: What if Kamala first propositioned and/or proposed the arrangement to him – does this take it out of Weinstein casting-couch territory (perhaps into semi-“sex-worker” territory instead)?

Q: Are such arrangements acceptable if the person not in the “power position” (male or female) initiates or first offers the proposition? Or are such arrangements inherently unacceptable?

So, as the Progressive media follows orders and peddles hagiographies of Kamala Harris as a pioneer “woman of color” – one may also become the first female President ( more like inevitably, given Joe Biden’s cognitive exit stage left) – it is critical for the rest of us to raise pertinent points, and to ask serious questions.

One being the Kamala Harris would not have gotten in this position in the first place but-for an adulterous relationship with a California power-broker, albeit a political one rather than an entertainment industry one. But in the end, is there any meaningful difference between a casting couch and a patronage couch?

Also: given that, is Kamala Harris an appropriate role model to present to girls and young women? If she does become Vice President (much less President) via the patronage couch, what message does her chosen means of career advancement convey to girls and young women?

Also: Is “Me Too” really about what it claims to be, or is it just another situational BS peddler, like the 1990’s “feminists” showed themselves to be?

If “Me Too” sticks to its stated principles, mustn’t it publicly oppose Kamala Harris’ candidacy?

If it does, what will the impact be on that candidacy – would that tank it?

Kamala Harris and “Me Too” do indeed present existential threats to each other.

Grab your popcorn and enjoy the show …

08/18/20

Property Tax Scam

By: T.F. Stern | Self-Educated American

All these years we’ve been playing a game with the Property Tax Assessors; they’re telling us what our property is worth according to market value so as to obtain as much tax from us as possible. We attempt to mitigate that figure to something more palatable through the appeals process and eventually pay something very close to what the original assessment bill had been.

(Image courtesy of The Daily Herald)

The game is simple, pay your taxes or they place a lien on your property, or worse, foreclose on your property and auction it off to the highest bidder.

There is an inherent problem with the entire notion of letting property tax assessors tell us what our property is worth. They work on the assumption that owners of the property are planning to sell at the current market value. This assumption improperly negates the idea that owners, when purchasing the property, planned on keeping the property until the day they died.

If I purchased a house for, let’s say twenty thousand dollars in 1975, and have kept it in reasonably good repair, that house might be sold in today’s market at around two hundred thousand dollars. The tax assessor comes by, jots down the location and considers what other houses in the area are selling for and sends in his/her perceived estimate of what the taxing authority should bill us for the opportunity to live in that neighborhood.

A month later we received a bill from the taxing authority telling us our house is currently being taxed for its market value of one hundred and ninety thousand dollars; their having lowered the assumed market value in order to avoid our appealing the estimate. But wait; I purchased the house for only twenty thousand dollars and have no intention of ever selling. The yearly taxes are approaching what the house was originally purchased for. It becomes burdensome to remain in the house and so you begin contemplating putting it on the market; sell in order to live where the taxes aren’t quite as high, perhaps moving to a retirement apartment community.

Here’s the solution; the taxing authority and the owner will agree that at the time the property was purchased it was worth what the buyer paid. This figure is easy to find as it will appear on the bill of sale. The house will always be taxed on the amount which the purchaser agreed was a fair market value at the time of purchase. That others all-around may wish to sell is irrelevant, the only individual capable of determining the value of the property is the owner.

This would put a squeeze on local governments as they tighten their belts; having scammed the public for so long as to believe their scam was legitimate. This would also put tax assessors on the unemployed list since there would no longer be a need for them.

But, the tax assessors would say; “What about improvements made to the property after it’s been purchased? That would increase the value of the property and warrant additional taxes, wouldn’t it?”

No, those improvements are made to satisfy the owner of the property. It becomes a matter of speculation that the owner made improvements simply to increase the property’s value in order to sell it to someone else.

My wife loves watching a show on the HGTV network, Love it or List it. David and Hillary are the competitors showing houses in need of transformation by Hillary’s team of construction workers in order to meet their needs and desires. At the same time, David takes them around to other houses or neighborhoods where they are shown properties that match up with their needs and desires.

After showing a house that exceeds their budget; but has everything imaginable under one roof he explains that they’ll have everything they want in this new house. How could they not jump at such a perfect house?

David then takes out a piece of paper showing what their house is currently valued at, adds the cost of improvements along with the estimated new current market value. He then reminds them what the new house is selling for and explains how they really can afford to purchase the new house in spite of it being thirty thousand dollars more than their top end limit.

At the end of the repairs, the owners must decide, “Do we love what Hillary’s done and keep it, absorbing the cost of those improvements… or… Do we buy the fancy new house David thinks is perfect for us and put the old house on the market, its value increased by the cost of those improvements?

Before the owners are given the chance to commit one way or the other, they break for several commercials; trying to sell premium value house paint, easy to install cabinet replacements, state of the art kitchen appliances, or solar roofing panels to offset your electricity bills. Now, back to our program, “Are you going to Love it…or are you going to List it?”

If they decide they’re going to Love it, the camera pans over to David’s face showing incredulity at their having turned down the perfect property he’d picked for them. How could you not want a newer, nicer house to live in?

Then again, Hillary’s team has turned their caterpillar into a Monarch Butterfly, so to speak. How could they not stay in this marvelous house which they already own but can now appreciate it to the fullest and not go through the trials of moving?

So, what has this got to do with property tax assessments? The property owner is the only one who can assign a value to any property; and that value is determined at the time of purchase, not five years, ten years or forty years later.

Self-Educated American, Senior Editor, T.F. Stern is both a retired City of Houston police officer and, most recently, a retired self-employed locksmith (after serving that industry for 40 plus years). He is also a gifted political and social commentator. His popular and insightful blog, T.F. Sterns Rantings, has been up and at it since January of 2005.

08/18/20

Suspicious Ordnance Boxes and the Bomb Squad

By: T.F. Stern | Self-Educated American

This afternoon there was an article on Facebook about a French Air to Air Missile that had been found at MacDill Air Force Base, something that put them all on alert. It included a picture of the bomb squad loading the item onto a transport vehicle to be taken away.

“It’s not every day that the bomb disposal team from MacDill Air Force Base gets called out to deal with a French air-to-air missile. But last Friday was no ordinary day.”

That brought back a memory from when I was a police officer back in 1980. My partner, Donnie White, and I were assigned a walking beat in downtown Houston, part of an attempt by the police department to establish what they called Community Policing. Basically they wanted us out meeting local business owners and the public in a less threatening manner rather than driving by in a patrol car on our way to a call.

While performing the duties as assigned we observed a delivery truck parked next to a multi-level parking garage owned by Foley’s department store. In the back of the pickup truck were two OD Green military style ordnance crates strapped together, one being about four foot long and the shorter one about two foot long.

(Image of a similar crate configuration courtesy of Dreamstime)

What got our attention was the stenciling in bold letters. I wish my memory were better, but the one in the smaller of the two boxes was listed as a Warhead for a certain type of rocket launcher while the box below it was listed as that type of rocket launcher.

We hadn’t seen the delivery truck driver and so we waited a while and waited some more. Each passing minute gave us time to be more concerned. Perhaps something or someone had spooked the driver away as we never would leave. It was about this time that we called our supervisor and asked if it might be a good idea to have the bomb squad check by our location.

About twenty minutes went by before the bomb squad technicians showed up in their specialty box truck. They carefully examined the ordnance boxes and were about to open them when the driver of the delivery truck happened to come along.

They asked to see the paperwork for his delivery items, mostly to see what was listed in the two ordnance boxes. The inventory sheet showed they contained industrial bearings. Upon opening the boxes, very carefully I might add, it turned out to be just that, industrial bearings for some kind of oil field project.

Whoever packed the bearings didn’t bother to paint over the military ordnance markings, something which is required by law. It all made for an interesting dry run for the bomb squad technicians and a memorable day for two walking beat police officers.