The Most Dangerous Cities in America Are Run by Democrats

 The Most Dangerous Cities in America Are Run by Democrats

27 of the 30 most dangerous cities in America are run by Democrats and most have been run by Democrats for decades.

As an example, New Orleans has been run by Democrats since 1872. It has the highest homicide rate of any city in America. Many of these cities have pursued Defunding the Police, eliminated cash bails for some crimes, and have refused to prosecute some crimes. In other words, these cities have increased the incentive of people to commit crimes. Plus these cities are often having trouble attracting enough police to fill their approved police rosters because so many police have left the force due to the negative attitude toward them by Democrats and so few want to become police now for the same reason Therefore it should be no surprise that Democratically run cities are the most violent, crime ridden cities in the nation.

Only the residents of these cities can fix this problem. They need to vote Democrats out of office and replace them with Republicans who support the police and are tough against crime. Otherwise, history will continue to repeat itself.

https://www.outkick.com/usa-most-dangerous-cities-are-run-by-democrats/?fbclid=IwAR1uvZdrPlTDiDnAVv_ARll5YTgY_DRUXd_R9CvaKWbeI95QYhoVUSFSStE

Abortion

 

Given the extreme polarization between Pro-Life and Pro-Death supporters (given that the opposite of life is death the obviously whitewashed description commonly used term of "Pro-Choice" avoids describing the real issue), I strongly hesitated writing anything on this issue. I am savvy enough to know that nothing I say will change the opinions of those on either side of the Abortion issue. I hope that I can at least help somewhat with the following facts.

Before starting, for the sake of perspective on the huge scope of the Abortion issue, let's present one startling fact - Over 63 million legal abortions have been performed in America since the 1973 Supreme Court decision on Roe versus Wade. 63 million human lives deliberately ended!!

Obviously, a healthy woman seeking an abortion never wanted to be pregnant in the first place. There are birth control solutions to prevent pregnancies. The most common and effective are birth control pills but they require a prescription. There are also prophylactics that do not require a prescription and also can prevent the spread of venereal disease.

Fortunately, the birth control prescription pills themselves are cheap, but does require a doctor's visit which may not be cheap depending on a person's insurance coverage. However, that doctor's visit will be a lot cheaper than the cost of a future abortion.

About 100 nations permit non-prescription birth control pills to be sold as they are proven safe for over 50 years. There are no age limits as to who can purchase them. America needs to do the same. This will prevent many unwanted pregnancies and therefore significantly reduce the number of women with unwanted pregnancies seeking abortions. Fortunately in 2023, the FDA has just approved the sale of the non-prescription birth control pills called Opill. They are predicted to be available to the public in 2024. Other birth control pills will still require a prescription. So the FDA needs to go further.

Hopefully, we can all agree with the following facts which should be very obvious:

1. The fetus of a pregnant woman seeking an abortion is alive. If the fetus is dead, than the woman would suffer a miscarriage and there would be nothing to discuss.

2. The fetus itself is "human". That's not a frog or turtle or some other creature inside a pregnant woman's body. That's a human life.

Given those two facts, the definition of an abortion is the deliberate killing of a human life. Reminder, just in America, over 63 million lives have been deliberately terminated since 1973.

For doctors who perform an abortion, you took a Hippocratic oath "to do no harm". How does you deliberately ending a human life equate to "to do no harm"? Logically, it doesn't.

The case of two premature births and how they are treated:

1. A woman goes into premature labor at 6 months pregnancy and delivers a baby. Doctors work intensively to save the baby's life and succeed. The baby goes on to live a full life.

2. Another woman seeks and gets an abortion at the same facility at 6 months pregnant at the same time as the woman in point 1. The baby is alive after the abortion. Doctors just leave the baby alone and let it die.

How can anyone justify saving the first baby and letting the second baby die?

Most Americans believe in God and believe in life after death where the good will be rewarded and the evil will be punished. Most Americans also believe in the Ten Commandments with the most important one being - "Thou Shall Not Kill". Therefore, what does God think of Abortion would be a relevant issue for most Americans to contemplate.

There seemingly are only two possibilities of God's thoughts on Abortion:

1. Abortion is a violation of the Commandment - Thou Shall Not Kill".

If God believes this, then abortion is murder, and the punishment would be eternal hell for the women having abortions, and also the doctors and the medical assistants performing the abortions.

OR

2. Abortion is a woman's right.

If God believes this, then interfering with a woman's right to an abortion is potentially a punishable sin. So what would be the punishment for taking actions that allow a fetus to live against a woman's wishes? Whatever the punishment would be, it has to be less than the punishment for the worst of all sins - murder.

Tinnitus Marketing Videos Follow the Same Script

Tinnitus which is a constant ringing in your ears 24/7 has no known cure. However, there are non prescription pills which claim to help. As you search for Tinnitus cures on the Internet, there are a number of them with marketing videos trying to get you to buy their product. These videos by different manufacturers all seem to follow the same script:

1. They start with a narrator who claims to have suffered terribly from Tinnitus for a long time. Could not concentrate, difficulty in sleeping, headaches, and it was so bad that his behavior scared his family and he felt terrible about that so he was determined to find a cure.

2. He promises to give the cure to you in a few minutes, but that's a lie. The video is 60 to 90 minutes long and you cannot advance the video at all. You must listen to the entire video before getting an answer.

3. Next he goes through a long process describing how he sought help from doctors but they couldn't help him.

4. So he does his own research going to famous doctors or institutions to learn about the Tinnitus research that they did. Then he does more research with them which takes months or years.

5. He supposedly finds that big pharmacy manufacturers are fighting against a Tinnitus cure because they make more money treating Tinnitus than curing it.And they are trying to prevent him from selling his actual cure.

6. He also says government has a cure but they restrict it to high members of the military and big politicians.

7. Through his extensive research with others, he fins someone who has a cure but has not been able to get the funding to sell and distribute it.

8. The cure is completely composed of many natural and sometimes rare ingredients found in remote areas of the world and these ingredients to work properly must not be tainted by fertilizers. He tested it on himself and many others, and the cure worked.

9. He founded a company either by himself or with others to get the tinnitus cure manufactured and distributed.

10. Because of the difficulty of getting all the pure ingredients necessary, this process is costly and the supply is very limited.

11. He could easily sell his product for lots of money, However, he is not interested in making a profit. Too many people suffer from Tinnitus and he just wants to get the cure to as many people as possible.

12. Therefore,he presents an offer to you to buy the limited supply at a discount price (usually about $69 for a one month bottle of pills) in a 30 minute time period if he doesn't sell out before them, so you better place your order now. however, it's best to order a 3 month or 6 month supply and keep taking them even if your Tinnitus has stopped in order to insure that it won't come back.

13. However, if you search Amazon, you normally can find the same product in an identical bottle of pills for less money. And if you look at the customer review scores and read the actual reviews, the results are poor.

Social Security Is A Mindless, Shameless Government Bureaucracy

The Social Security Administration is a shameless government bureaucracy that refuses to take responsibility and make corrections for the bad advice it gives to retirees. They cheated my wife out of $5,000 a year in benefits, $30,000 lifetime so far, by giving her bad advice and then refusing to fix it. When my wife turned her full SS retirement age in 2007, her earned benefit (from her employment SS taxes) was $38 a month more than her spousal benefit (which is half of my SS benefit). She called SS and asked them which benefit she should take - Earned or Spousal. SS told her, of course, take the higher earned benefit, so she did. 16 months later, I read a financial article, that correctly stated that if she had taken her spousal benefit and waited 4 years until age 70, she could switch to her earned benefit then and receive 8% more for each of 4 years for a total increase of 32% to her original earned benefit. That would have been an increase of over $400 to her monthly SS check for an additional $5,000 a year for the rest of her life (note SS ended this "switch" program recently, but it was in effect back then, but you still get an additional 8% a year if you delay collecting any SS benefits until age 70).

So we immediately contacted SS and told them the facts and that we would like to return the extra $38 a month collected for 16 months, go to spousal benefits starting with the first year 2007, so that at age 70 my wife could switch to her 32% higher earned benefit. SS refused. They said that she could return the entire 16 months of SS collected (about $20,000) and then switch to earned benefit at age 70 for 16% more not 32% more because it would use year 2009, not 2007 to make the calculation. That deal made no economic sense for us so we did not do that. However, we both still very much resent the mindless bureaucrats at Social Security who make retirees pay for SS bureaucratic mistakes/bad advice given to us retirees. If SS had been a corporation instead of a government bureaucracy, no doubt that we would have won our case.

Doctors - Here's Where to Research For A Tinnitus Cure

 I have tinnitus which is a constant buzzing/ringing in your ears. It's very frustrating and there is no cure for it. Doctors say it has nothing to do with your ears. It is an internal issue/damage within your brain. However, there are activities that temporary stop the ringing/buzzing. So doctors, here's where to research for a cure:

1. Given that tinnitus has nothing to do with your ears, why do loud enough sounds such as music, the noise from multiple pickleball courts with people playing on them, lawn mowers and leaf blowers "drown out" tinnitus so I don't hear it if it has nothing to do with my ears? Whatever it is, can it be used to "trick" tinnitus from disturbing me?
2. When I am playing pinochle with friends which also involves conversation and "thinking", why am I not hearing/noticing my tinnitus? Similarly when I am deep in thought focused on something such as researching my family tree or in conversation with others, shopping in a store for just about anything, or sometimes just watching a TV program or news program that interests me, why am I not hearing my tinnitus? Whatever it is, can it be used to "trick" tinnitus from disturbing me?
3. When I am sleeping, I don't hear my tinnitus. When I wake up, I hear it immediately (which can make it difficult to fall back to sleep given that, as a diabetic, I wake up multiple times at night to use the bathroom). What is the mechanism in being asleep that turns off tinnitus? Whatever it is, can it be used to "trick" tinnitus from disturbing me?

Retirement has been an Evolution

 

I remember when I retired over 15 years ago, I both looked forward to not working anymore and also had some reservations as to how I was going to keep from getting bored with all that free time. How I keep from getting bored is different now then the earlier years of my retirement.

1. At the beginning of my retirement, I kept from being bored by:

a. Playing golf twice a week.

b. Doing a lot of financial planning, seminars, and investing the first 5 years.

c. Doing a lot of family tree research

d. Planning and taking 3 to 4 vacations a year for the first 10 years and before Covid hit. Traveled to much of the US and to 25 nations in Europe, Asia, the Caribbean, Mexico, and Costa Rica.

e. Taking lots of photos and videos of vacations and family and editing them.

f. I exercised daily on a treadmill for 3o minutes (walking at a brisk five miles an hour) and then increased that to twice a day.

2. As time progressed:

a. I dropped golf which I was never good at and play pickleball 5 days a week which I am good at. I had to drop the treadmill due to knee problems and the recumbent bike never gave me the good blood sugar results that the treadmill gave so I dropped it too.

b. Got into a pinochle group for men, women, and couples. The men and women's groups play once a week and then go to lunch together. There's also a monthly pinochle Men's nightly pinochle game with dinner first, and the same for a monthly couples pinochle game with dinner first.

c. Put hundreds of gigabytes of edited photos and videos for family, vacations, Family research, and internet photos of amazing places, nature, etc., Investment Advice, on a website that I share with family through links and that I continue to update.

d. Created a blog for my interests and thoughts on Economics, finance, and politics.

3. Most recently:

a. Our diabetes causing frequent bathroom trips has made the guided tour vacations we liked to take impractical. fortunately, we have seen almost everything we wanted to see.

b. So we started taking more all inclusive beach vacations since bathrooms by the pool and ocean are always near by. However, we have gotten bored with them and the food and nightly shows are not as good as in the past, so we stopped doing them.

c. Still doing pickleball, pinochle, and family tree research.

d. Some TV time, more computer time including reading a newspaper on line and playing pinochle and Hearts on my computer with my wife and "robots" or just robots.

e. Going out for lunch and dinner more often.

f. Giving investment advice to young family members.

The Debt Ceiling and How to Responsibly Eliminate It

 

The Debt Ceiling and How to Responsibly Eliminate It

The debt ceiling is a limit on the total amount of government borrowing. First put in place by Congress during World War I, it was meant to give blanket authorization for the Treasury Department to borrow money up to a set amount.

1. This is the "PAYMENT " side of government responsibilities.

Therefore the debt ceiling and all the political fighting, which has occurred 79 times to raise it when it is not enough to pay the nation's bills that are in the budget did not exist before World War 1. Therefore, it has been proven possible to live without it.

As previously mentioned the debt ceiling is a product of the budgets approved by Congress. Therein lies the problem that needs to be fixed. It is the Constitutional duty of Congress to pass a budget every year. It seldom does.

2. This is the "SPENDING" side of government responsibilities.

Instead of doing its job, Congress rarely passes an annual budget and consequently gets into many other fights during the year to keep the government running and passes temporary "Continuing Resolutions" during each year to authorize spending. Unfortunately these Continuing Resolutions are always a fixed percentage increase over last year - no thinking involved.

In other words, instead of making the necessary hard decisions on where to raise and where to cut spending based on anticipated tax revenues and by how much that would and should be involved in a true budget process, Congress ignores its true responsibilities and "kicks the can down the road".

THIS IS HOW TO FIX IT:

Eliminate Continuing Resolutions. Make the budget a truly MANDATORY annual event. If the political parties cannot agree on a budget for the new fiscal year by the annual budget deadline, then automatically cut last year's budget by 10% across the board and let that be the new mandatory annual budget until Congress passes a real budget. Also, to insure that Congress "lives within its means" make it mandatory, with the exception of when we are in a war, that total budget spending may not increase more than inflation plus may not exceed anticipated tax receipts by more than 5%.

Such a budget result (10% cut to last year's budget for the new annual fiscal budget) would be unacceptable to all political parties and that fact plus voter anger on spending cuts such as Social Security and welfare would force Congress to do its job and actually make the necessary hard decisions, based on actual tax revenues, on what areas to cut spending and what areas to increase spending within each annual budget and by how much. Those necessary decisions are not being made today and should be. If we do not implement those recommendations, eventually the Untied States will not be able to borrow enough money to pay its bills and debt obligations, and as happened to other nations, the entire economy will crash with dire results for all of us.

Let me give Congress a "head start" on where to cut the budget - SUBSIDIES. There are thousands of Federal subsidies with as many as 100 new Federal subsidies added each year. These subsidies are hidden from view - being buried in many different "Departmental" budgets and amounts to hundreds of billions of dollars and maybe even over a trillion dollars each year. Each subsidy overrides the free marketplace and therefore is a "Slice of Communism" - the most failed economic system in the world.

Minimally put all subsidies in a single "Departmental" Subsidy budget and subdivide it by type of subsidy so that all of us can view the amounts spent of each type of subsidy. The goal is to permanently Eliminate all Federal subsidies within 10 years or less. Most are small enough that they can be eliminated in just one year. Agricultural subsidies would probably need a 10 year reduction program before elimination because some of those subsidies, such as growing corn for ethanol production instead of food, have caused farmers to make key investments such as buying land to increase corn production.

The Real Heroes of Our Quality of Life

 

The Real Heroes of Our Quality of Life

History teaches us the importance of heroes such as George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, etc.. and they were important. However, they had nothing to do with the great quality of life we have today compared to most human beings throughout history. That honor goes to the important inventors. Most of us, including me, don't know their names, but what they did gave us a great quality of life. These important inventions include (think what our life would be like today if none of these would have been invented):

1. The light bulb in conjunction with Commercial electricity delivered to our homes and businesses to make light bulbs and many more appliances work.

2. Indoor heating.

3. The Refrigerator.

4. Air Conditioning.

5. Washing machines and dryers.

5. Motorized Land Vehicles - Cars, trucks, trains, and tractors.

6. Airplanes.

7. Phones.

8. Television

9. Computers.

10. The Atom Bomb - probably the only reason we haven't had a World War in 78 years, given that the first two World Wars were only 20 years apart. 70 million people were killed in World War 2 and millions more wounded. Conventional weapons have vastly improved since then.

Watching TV Is No Fun Anymore.

Watching TV is no fun anymore. 40 to 50% of the time is devoted to commercials compared to 20% prior to cable TV which promised us "No commercials" as compensation for paying for what was then completely free TV. In addition to currently expensive cable TV, when the actual program is on, there is that annoying Channel symbol or channel wording on the bottom right corner of the TV. Never had that with free TV. In addition, while the program is on, there are occasional mini-commercials in either writing or video on the entire bottom of the screen. Never had that with free TV. Sometimes there is fixed commercial wording in one or two of the other corners of the TV. Never had that with free TV.

Black People Reparations Have Been Paid in Full

 Black People Reparations Have Been Paid in Full

Today, there is a lot of talk about government paying "reparations" to Black people for slavery and discrimination. Some proposals would reward Black people millions of dollars. Think of that - every or many black people would become millionaires paid for by the rest of us who would mostly remain non-millionaires. The rest of us would automatically become poorer through more taxes, interest and principal paid on debt, and devaluation of what a dollar is worth. The truth is for Black people your reparations have been paid in full for the following reasons:

1. No one alive today was a slave nor are any slave owners alive. Slavery was eliminated at the end of the civil war in 1865 158 years ago.

2. The Supreme Court outlawed segregation in 1954. Anyone alive in 1954 in now 69 years old (newborn babies in 1954) or older or dead.

3. The Civil Rights Act banning employment discrimination was passed in 1964 plus the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965. Anyone who was working then (using 18 years old and older) are now 77 years old or older (that is mostly retired) or dead.

4. The average annual cost of a free public school student education in America (13 years - Kindergarten through 12th grade) is $10,000 a year for a total of $130,000. In large cities where Blacks live in large numbers, the average annual cost of a free public school education is $20,000 a year for a total of $260,000 for 13 years. While many Blacks took full advantage of that expensive free education, many other Blacks did not (either dropping out of school or not applying themselves to achieve good grades) and that is the reason why so many did not do well in employment results. That's on them, not the rest of us in America.

5. There are many government subsidies, scholarships, and easy to get student loans for college for Black people who cannot afford college. The rest of us paid for those programs. Those Blacks who did not take advantage of them did so voluntarily. That's on them, not the rest of us.

6. Affirmative Action, designed to help minorities including Blacks succeed in their employment was part of the 1964 Civil Rights Act plus was strengthened further in 1965 and 1969.

7. 50% of single parent households live in poverty compared to 10% of married households with children living in poverty. Easy to understand - two potential workers and two potential babysitters have much more opportunity to earn more money than one potential worker and one babysitter. Today, 3 out of 4 black babies are born to single parent households. Whose fault is that? Answer - Black mothers who have children voluntarily without getting married. This causes the rest of us workers to pay a fortune in government welfare payments to most of these deliberate single parents who for the most part don't work. Also, teenage boys from single parent households without fathers to guide them are much more likely to drop out of school and/or commit criminal acts.

8. The Black crime rate has been around 8 times the national average for decades. Hard to make money when part or all of your adult life is spent in jail. Plus with the loss of job experience due to jail time, it is harder to gain high paying jobs compared to non criminals who have been working hard while those Blacks deservedly were in jail. That's on the criminals, not the rest of us. Plus we law abiding citizens pay an annual fortune to sustain each person in jail.

Conclusion - Black reparations have been paid in full to every Black alive today. It is up to each Black person to take advantage of the huge fortune that has been invested in them by the rest of us.

Joe Biden's Job Performance After 27 months as President

 Just the Facts - No Opinions: 

1. High Inflation under Biden - hurt everybody. 

2. Illegal immigration - record highs - keeps welfare costs high; keeps low paying jobs low as supply exceeds demand, tells people who immigrated here legally which took several years, that they must be stupid, high drug smuggling resulting in record American deaths, human smuggling amounting to slavery. 

3. Record debt and record spending that will eventually destroy our economy that is no longer related to Covid, but to Socialism - the most failed economic system in human history. 

4. Record crime waves in mostly Democratic cities. 

5. Much higher interest rates due to high inflation caused mostly by excessive government spending making it harder for people to buy houses. 

6. Forgiveness of college loans making us who paid for our own and/or our children's college expenses also pay for the college expenses of strangers. Easy to get college loans is the reason that college expenses have risen 4 times faster than inflation for decades and also the reason why financially naive 18 year olds make stupid decisions to attend expensive colleges instead of more affordable cheaper colleges without regard to how hard it will be to pay off those college loans when they either graduate or drop out of college (about half drop out of college before graduating). not to mention adding almost 2 trillion dollars to government debt. 

7. Dangerous decrease in domestic military supplies shipped to Ukraine without any effort to quickly replace them. 

8. Huge increase in the price of gasoline and energy costs since Trump was President caused by Biden's war on fossil fuels from day one of his Presidency that won't materially impact climate change because the real problem lies with China and India, especially their unfiltered thousands of coal plants, and they are doing nothing about it. In fact they are still building new ones. Note that American coal plants, of which there are a lot fewer, filter out 90% of their pollution from the atmosphere. So the draconian climate change rules Biden is adopting will kill our economy without impacting world climate change materially. 

9. Favorable trading status to China by Biden expands their dominance in Chinese imports while not doing anything to increase our exports. Plus little progress in getting vulnerable exposure and need for Chinese imports for medicines, solar and wind power, rare earth for tech products, etc..

10. Biden's refusal for months to negotiate on the debt ceiling with Republicans which could result in the first ever default on our debt which likely will destroy our economy and hurt all of us significantly. Every other Administration in the past have negotiated a settlement on the debt ceiling as it came up.

The Many Problems with Electric Vehicles

1. Electric Vehicles are much more expensive to purchase. They also depreciate much faster than gas powered vehicles (see point 2 for a good reason why).

2. EV batteries last 10 to 12 years and costs many thousands of dollars, even tens of thousands of dollars to replace.

3. EVs are much heavier and can present a towing problem.

4. A total switch to EVs would over power our nation's electric grid leading to blackouts. Plus the necessary nationwide infrastructure for recharging EVs on the road (instead of just at home) is nowhere near viable at this time.

5. Raw materials needed for batteries are extracted at a high human and environmental toll. This includes, for example, child labor, health and safety hazards in informal work, poverty and pollution. Batteries require a lot of minerals, and that means a lot of mining and transporting of materials. According to mining and energy specialist Mark Mills, a thousand-pound electric car battery requires the moving of 500,000 pounds of earth in the course of mining.

6. A recycling challenge looms over the eleven million tones of spent lithium-ion batteries forecast to be discarded by 2030, with few systems in place to enable reuse and recycling in a circular economy for batteries.

7. Safety, Fires can start at any time. Even flood waters can set them off. It’s harder to impossible to put out the fire of EVs. When the battery is on fire, it’s absolutely inaccessible to fire suppressants like water. There is also a chance of re-ignition without sufficient cooling, which can lead to a long-lasting fire.

8. Reliability. Consumer Reports named electric SUVs the least-reliable vehicle type. The most common EV problem areas were "in-car electronics, noises and leaks, power equipment, climate system, body hardware, drive system, and paint and trim," the report said.

9. Dependence on China whose intent is to dominate us and the rest of the world economically - The materials and parts for EVs plus the materials for finished products for solar and wind power come from China and thus threaten the future stability of our national Energy needs.

Mass Shootings and Gun Control

Remember that when the Second Amendment (granting us our right to bear arms) was passed, it took a full 30 seconds to load a rifle before it could fire a single bullet. Then it took another 30 seconds to load it again before it could fire a second bullet. If assault rifles, which are essentially machine guns existed then, our Founding Fathers would very likely have worded the Second Amendment differently. Our right to bear arms currently does not give us the right to own and use atom bombs, fighter jets, tanks, and 50 caliber machine guns. So there is and should be a current limit on our right to bear arms. Where should the line be drawn as to what arms we can and cannot use? Any weapon that is effectively a machine gun should be banned. That would require the Federal government buying back millions of AR-15 assault rifles. Likely, many will not sell it back to the government. Make it life imprisonment just to own one after the turn it in to the government deadline has passed. That won't be perfect but would significantly help. No other nation on Earth has the repeated mass shooting problem that we have here in America. We need a solution that works much better than doing nothing.

Dictatorship Nations Are Not Legitimate Governments

 All nations headed by a dictator are not legitimate governments. Only a nation's citizens can elect and confirm a legitimate government. When opposition political parties are outlawed and there is no freedom of the press nor freedom of speech, the people of that nation have not truly elected and verified a legitimate government to rule over them. All other nations should refuse to recognize dictatorial nations for the reason that they are not representative of the citizens of that nation. Don't do business with them either until the rights of their people have been restored. Such a policy is the best, fastest way to eventually economically collapse these dictatorships which likely will then lead to a needed change to a democracy.

Democrats are Weaponizing the Media , FBI, and Attorney Generals to Attack Republicans Unfairly

 Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the press and eliminated all other political parties in Nazi Germany resulting in World War 2 where 70 million people were killed. That was the past and unfortunately history is repeating itself today right here in the US. In the Unites States today, that one party supressing freedom of speech was and is the Democratic Party. Not only the media, but they are doing the same in schools and colleges. Who called and responded to the harassment of Republican and Conservative politicians and judges? - multiple Democrats. Who lobbied and successfully got Cable TV to drop popular Conservation news media such as One America News and NewsMax off the air? - the Democrats. Who stops Conservative speakers from speaking at colleges and universities? - the Democrats. Who censors Conservatives on social media - the liberal tech companies that support Democrats. Who is weaponizing our FBI and Attorney Generals against Republicans? - the Democrats. Our Constitutional right to Freedom of Speech is in grave peril and with it, so is our total freedoms that are guaranteed by our Constitution.

True Cost of Credit Card Minimum Payments

How much does an item purchased really cost you if you bought it on credit and only pay the minimum monthly payment each month? Answer - Depends on the credit card interest rate. Interest rates over 20% are not unusual. Here are two examples:

1. If the credit card interest rate is 18% and you only pay the minimum amount listed on your monthly bills, then your actual cost (interest paid plus principal amount still due) doubles after 4 years, triples after 8 years, quadruples after 12 years!!
2. If the credit card interest rate is 24%, then as above except instead of 4, 8, and 12 years, use 3, 6, and 9 years.

Black Economic Inequality - What News Media are Hiding

 Next time you see a news story about the economic inequality of Blacks compared to Whites, be aware of what they are not telling you that really matters and explains the difference:

1. Black educational achievements, despite up to $20,000 per public schools student invested annually, are much below the national average. Blacks can fix this themselves and nobody can stop them.

2. 3 out of 4 Black babies are born to single parent households while 3 out of 4 White babies are born to married households. Given the advantage of having two potential income earners and two potential parent babysitters versus one, it is no surprise that only 10% of married households with children live in poverty versus 50% for single parent households. Blacks can fix this themselves and nobody can stop them.

3. For decades, the crime rate for Blacks has been roughly 8 times the national average while the White crime rate has been below the national average, largely a factor of Black teenage boys growing up and having no father to guide and discipline them. Hard to earn income in jail and also hard to earn good income with a criminal record when out of jail. Blacks can fix this themselves and nobody can stop them. Blacks can fix this themselves and nobody can stop them.

Texts need to go the way of the Dinosaurs

 What is the fascination with texts and why does the entire world seemingly believe that every person has text capabilities? I don't and never want to. A text is essentially an email that annoyingly dings your phone. Emails and phone calls are far superior than texts. If you want to communicate with a person right away, then call them. Talking is much faster and easier than typing text messages. Plus with phone calls, you do not need to learn essentially another language consisting of text abbreviations. I sometimes see text abbreviations used on Facebook and often have no idea what is being said. With spam texts, from what I've read. you have to delete each spam text individually. With spam emails, you can elect to check the "all" box on the top of the first listed spam email and delete all of them in one step whether they be dozens or even hundreds of spam emails. Plus, with spam emails, you don't have the annoyance of each spam email dinging your phone as you do with spam texts. Who needs or wants that? Texts need to go the way of the dinosaurs.

Protect Our Police

 A cop is 25 times more likely to die in the line of duty than a Black person is likely to be killed by police. Most of the Blacks who got killed by police, including George Floyd, were resisting arrest and/or either fleeing or fighting with police, which in itself is a crime!. So Congress, your real job is to protect our brave police, who put their lives on the line everyday, so that we can be protected from criminals, by widely educating people, starting when they are public school students, on a national level to always cooperate with police and they will be fine and also there will be less cops killed on the job. That's a Win-Win for everyone!! If they do not cooperate with police including fighting or fleeing from police, and consequently get hurt or killed, than that result is on them, not the police.

House Mortgage Warnings and Guidelines

 Be careful on house closings. We've been unpleasantly surprised in the past when showing up to a closing and the closing costs were thousands of dollars more than we expected. Hidden fees and much more escrow for property taxes than we expected. Most mortgages - the bank pays your property taxes and adds that to the mortgage payment to make sure that the town doesn't foreclose on a home that the bank is financing. High escrow at closing protects the bank for a while from using their own money to pay property taxes when the homeowner is late with a mortgage payment. If you lose a job and can't pay your mortgage, sell it as fast as you can to prevent bank foreclosure. Banks love to foreclose because they, not you, keep the equity you put in your house when they sell it and do not return any excesses above the mortgage amount, but instead keep all that equity. Also, never voluntarily increase your mortgage payment to pay the loan off faster. If you lose your job or are in ill health and therefore can't make mortgage payments in the future the bank could foreclose and keep even more equity. Plus most of that extra payment pays down interest not principal. It's equivalent to you giving an interest free loan to the bank. Who wants to do that?!! Instead, invest that extra mortgage payment until it grows large enough to pay off the loan. Double advantage - if you lose your job in the future, that savings gives you more time to sell the house while continuing to make your mortgage payments before the bank can foreclose when you run out of money and stop making mortgage payments, plus by investing your money, you will likely be able to pay off the mortgage sooner than increasing your mortgage payment as your investment grows in value over time. Finally get a 15 year mortgage, not a 25 or 30 year mortgage. The mortgage payment isn't that much higher for the 15 year mortgage, and you will save lots of interest paid on your mortgage. Get a fixed rate mortgage, not a variable rate mortgage. People who got variable rate mortgages are getting huge increases in their mortgage payments with the recent large increases in interest rates. If you have a fixed mortgage and interest rates go down substantially, you can always refinance (usually closing costs are much less on a refinance). Finally, as property taxes increase each year, expect your mortgage payment to also increase. If the bank allows it (some do) structure your mortgage so that you pay it, not the bank. But be careful - its normally paid to the town in one lump sum per year which can be several thousand dollars, and you need to be prepared to have that money available. If your other tax deductibles are large, you can deliberately plan to pay two years of property taxes in the same year, by paying one year a couple of months early. This can raise you tax deductibles sometimes enough to "itemize" your taxes and get a tax refund or pay less total taxes. This strategy would be an every other year strategy. If it doesn't raise your deductibles enough to get taxes saved by itemizing your taxes, then it's not worth doing.

The Fair Way to Conduct Presidential Primaries

 Primary schedules have always been unfair and ridiculous in my opinion. There should be 10 primaries of 5 states each and each of those groups of 5 states should be spread out across the nation and be a mixture of "red" and "blue" states as much as is practical (some states are neither red and blue and there is not an even divide of red and blue states). Also should be a mixture of large population and smaller population states. Then every primary that follows should rotate those groups of 5 states up in the primary schedule and move the group of 5 states that were first in the last primary to last place. That's the only "fair" way to conduct primaries. All states rotate and there is never just one state that is the only state in the first primary. No state should ever get such preferential treatment in a national primary.

America's Federal Debt as of January 2023

 Americans have heard so often about the high level of Federal debt being a serious threat to our Economy, but nothing has happened yet, that they've seemingly become immune to it. Take a look at these facts:

1. It took 224 years to reach 5 trillion dollars in Federal debt in the year 2,000.
2. It only took 8 more years to add another 5 trillion dollars to Federal debt, thus doubling it in 2008. (Bush Administration).
3. Next, just 8 years later during the Obama Administration, an additional 10 trillion dollars was added to Federal debt thus doubling it again in 2016 to 20 trillion dollars.
4. 6 years later, another 11 trillion dollars has been added to the Federal debt bringing it to 31 trillion dollars!! That works out to $95,000 worth of debt for each man, woman, and child in America or $380,000 for a family of four.
5. The current Federal Budget has 2 trillion dollars in additional spending than the recent pre-Covid budget of 2019. We need to get back to the 2019 budget, and then find more spending cuts to avoid Economic disaster!!

https://www.thebalancemoney.com/national-debt-by-year-compared-to-gdp-and-major-events-3306287

Democrats and Electric Cars

Democrats want you to buy electric cars instead of gas powered cars and have been creating laws that essentially ban gas powered new cars in the future. The average price for a brand new EV is about $55,000. That’s considerably higher than the average four-door sedan, which runs about $35,000, according to Kelly Blue Book. Most Americans cannot afford the price of an electric car. Are you going to let Democrats drive you into poverty? Remember that when you cast your vote in future elections.

A Loving and Merciful God – True or False?

 One of the teachings of my 12 years of Catholic parochial school was that God is loving and merciful. I would love to believe that, but the evidence seems to suggest the opposite when it comes to mercy and that is really scary!!. Examples include:

1. God had no mercy for his son Jesus being tortured and cruelly crucified. If God had no mercy for his Son, what makes you think he has mercy for us mere human beings?

2. 10 million people died in World War 1. A little over 20 years later an incredible 70 million people died in World War 2. Millions of others were wounded with many carrying life time disabilities and/or pain afterwards. Plus there have been many wars throughout human history right up to today. Why doesn't God, in his mercy, stop them?

3. Where is God's mercy for the millions of people suffering now and in the past from cancer, paralysis, blindness, deafness, physical and mental disabilities, and other horrific diseases?

4. God's punishment for dying in sin is eternal hell cruelty. Think about that for a moment. Imagine being punished for 100 trillion years. Think of how incredibly long that is to be excruciatingly punished. Now imagine the punishment of 100 trillion years being repeated 100 trillion times!! And the punishment is still not done!! Where is God's mercy?

5. Yet God made us to be imperfect. Everyone sins in his life – no exceptions per the Bible (“He who is without sin cast the first stone”). Per my Catholic school teachings, if a very kind, generous, and obedient person commits a “mortal” sin and suddenly and instantly dies, say of a heart attack, leaving him no time to confess his sorrow for sinning, that person goes to hell for eternity. Also, if a person who lived a horrible life, sinning many times including multiple cases of robbery and murder, gets sick and slowly dies over weeks and/or months, thus giving him time to think about his sins, confess truthfully that he is sorry, and sincerely asks for forgiveness before he dies, he goes to heaven. Is that fair? Is that merciful to the person who lived a long and good life and sinned once just before he suddenly died?