I wanna know why Jared Kushner secured a 2 billion dollar deal from his office in the White House during Trumps first term, and Trump didn’t get a cut of it.

(Daddy Trump always gets his cut…)

What silence was bought with that deal?

In lieu of trees and shade, I’ve been told (by a woman that was almost 100 years old) that during a really miserable heat wave, (she hated being too hot) get into a basement or anyplace that has a first level that is in - not on - the ground.

NGL, I’ve been to that point, getting others to just let go of QuickTime and use VLC instead… LOL!

The '60s. It was the decade when fashion broke loose for younger Americans and they decided to wear clothes as a form of self expression, unlike decades earlier where clothing fashions were determined by social conformity.

Am I incorrect, but isn’t LinkedIn fairly useless as a site for finding new employment? From what I’ve read of it, it has devolved into just another mediocre social network with the full assortment of trolls, spammers and con-men.

…yaah, that was a puff piece for sure…

I honestly think it’s going to have to be a consumer revolt. I spent 15 years in the Nielsen Homescan Consumer Panel - rebranded in the mid 2000’s as National Consumer Panel - it’s basically the flipside of the Nielsen TV survey and it measures the effectiveness of advertising.

As a long time Adbusters reader (from the mid-90’s) I was keenly aware of advertising setting a mindset of consumerism…

So imagine my delight when I got in on the ground floor of the industry that sold data to the advertisers regarding what worked and what did not.

It HAS to be a consumer strike, that is the leverage point.

Advertisers spend billions a year to get people to buy shit they don’t need, with money they don’t have. And it works, and maintains the entire capitalist mechanism with almost perfect results.

Thing is, as I have pointedly remarked at the occasional focus group I’ve been invited to, (then usually dis-invited out the door quite quickly) the question I ask - which is never answered, is “How many Americans get pushed into abject poverty before the entire economy collapses on itself? How much wage stagnation do we have across the board before the people who hired this focus group start to lose business because fewer and fewer consumers can buy what they’re selling?”

I think we’re coming close to finding that out and it’s why the billionaires are so voraciously hoarding their wealth. I did catch the news item that stated the US has hit insolvency.

Fun times ahead, and at the least we all have to take care of, and watch out for, each other. God knows the government isn’t capable of offering any legitimate help anymore.

Thanks for the numbers! Will check out the prior post you linked.

At least with Trump the civilised world is waking up to the dangers of trusting anything coming out of the US.

Amen brother. This nation’s gone full metal imbecile. It’s going to take decades to come close to even sorting it out, if ever.

When George Bush Senior (remember him? I do…) was running for President in 1979 against Ronald Reagan it was he who coined the term “voo-doo economics” in response to the “trickle down” policies that Reagan cottoned on to that were promulgated by Arthur Laffer.

What Bush Sr. was saying was correct, in that deregulation wouldn’t see as much capital as possible getting to those at the bottom as needed. He was stopped from this critical angle by Reagan offering him the VP’s seat. so he shut up and took it.

It was the neo-liberal Bill Clinton just kept up the movement that started over a decade earlier.

We forget it was George Bush Sr. who put NAFTA on the table but it was Clinton who got to sign it (and take credit for it) as the trade negotiations it entailed took years to hammer out and were done AFTER Bush got voted out… (this was why the GOP hated “Slick Willie” so much…) Clinton got credit for many of the policies that the Republicans put forth, and was more pro-business than many of them were. (The best they got on Clinton was the Monica Lewinsky affair, which they made into a Movie of the Week drama.)

All of the deregulation that allowed for consolidation of media and stepped up the rightward swing of politics really started however on Reagan’s watch.

I was there, and been watching it happen since I was in high school in 1980.

This isn’t surprising, given the agenda of the so-called “conservative” right for the last 46 years…

Drink tea or coffee… you’ll lose that “pearly white” affectation in a few decades, regardless of how much you brush, floss and see a dentist.

Ask me how I know…

Eugggggghhhh! Oh… poor doggo!

NGL. I’ve been foodstamp assistance eligibile for most of my working life. I’ve also religiously seen a dentist twice a year, without fail, for well over the last 40 years.

If you are blessed with trouble-free health (I know not everyone is…) forget the doctor and get yourself a dentist.

Also do not drink cola or any soda pop with phosphoric acid in it - that shit will eat the enamel off your teeth…

Teeth ARE the front end of health.

As the public switches away from gasoline powered cars and countries embrace alternative generation technologies, of course the industry is going to go into panic mode… Which is stupid. What no one seems to get is that many of these alternatively powered machines will still require high quality, high temperature and high viscosity oils and greases to operate. What is merely decades of oil reserves used primarily as fuels, can become centuries of reserves used for lubicants. Stupid to look backwards and cling to the past.

I have half a mind to investigate the document and find the “…debilitating consequences of happiness…”

I wonder if this was written by someone clinically depressed, cynical and angry.

Hmmmm.

Got it done! Everything’s in the hi-lux in the garage now, and am having lunch and a bit of a break and will go unload it afterwards. Then it’s on to fixing a plumbing chase that isn’t properly insulated and then framing it out tonight.

Are tanks still a major fighting force?

Apparently not. Russia’s oligarchs diverted too much money from it’s military over the past few decades and they ran through pretty much everything they had that still worked.

Oh well. Too bad.

got to clear out a basement storage room - I left a TON of paint and joint compound plus a full kit of equipment actually - and forgot about it months ago.

Gotta get my shit together tomorrow and haul it all out to the workshop.

GOOD! Nothing may happen to the turds until Trump is out of office but when the axe falls, I hope every lqst one of the little shits loses their heads.