Showing posts with label blogs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blogs. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Trust is Gone


Another excellent article that I received from a friend and thought that it needed sharing .


TRUST IS GONE, by Dennis Prager

By Dennis Prager

I have been broadcasting for 31 years and writing for longer than that.  I do not recall ever saying on radio or in print that a president is doing lasting damage to our country.  I did not like the presidencies of Jimmy Carter (the last Democrat I voted for) or Bill Clinton.  Nor did I care for the "compassionate conservatism" of George W. Bush.  In modern political parlance "compassionate" is a euphemism for ever-expanding government.
But I have never written or broadcast that our country was being seriously damaged by a president.  So it is with great sadness that I write that President Barack Obama has done and continues to do major damage to America .  The only question is whether this can ever be undone.

This is equally true domestically and internationally.
Domestically, his policies have had a grave impact on the American economy.  He has overseen the weakest recovery from a recession in modern American history.
He has mired the country in unprecedented levels of debt: about $6.5 trillion -- that is 6,500 billion -- in five years (this after calling his predecessor "unpatriotic" for adding nearly $5 trillion in eight years).

He has fashioned a country in which more Americans now receive government aid -- means-tested, let alone non-means-tested -- than work full-time.  He has no method of paying for this debt other than printing more money -- thereby surreptitiously taxing everyone through inflation, including the poor he claims to be helping, and cheapening the dollar to the point that some countries are talking about another reserve currency -- and saddling the next generations with enormous debts.
With his 2,500-page Affordable Care Act he has made it impossible for hundreds of thousands, soon millions, of Americans to keep their individual or employer-sponsored group health insurance; he has stymied American medical innovation with an utterly destructive tax on medical devices;and he has caused hundreds of thousands of workers to lose full-time jobs because of the health-care costs imposed by Obamacare on employers.

His Internal Revenue Service used its unparalleled power to stymie political dissent. No one has been held accountable.

His ambassador to Libya and three other Americans were murdered by terrorists in Benghazi , Libya.  No one has been blamed.  The only blame the Obama administration has leveled was on a videomaker in California who had nothing to do with the assault.  In this president's White House the buck stops nowhere.

Among presidents in modern American history,he has also been a uniquely divisive force.  It began with his forcing Obamacare through Congress --the only major legislation in American history to be passed with no votes from
the opposition party.   

 Though he has had a unique opportunity to do so,
he has not only not helped heal racial tensions, he has exacerbated them.
His intrusions into the Trayvon Martin affair ("If I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon") and into the confrontation between a white police officer and a black Harvard professor (the police "acted stupidly")were unwarranted, irresponsible, demagogic, and most of all, divisive.  He should have been reassuring black Americans that America is in fact the least racist country in the world -- something he should know as well as anybody, having been raised only by whites and being the first (halfbreed) black elected leader of a white-majority nation. Instead, he echoed the inflammatory speech of professional race-baiters such as Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson.

 He has also divided the country by economic class, using classic Marxist language against "the rich"
and "corporate profits." Regarding America in the world, he has been, if possible, even more damaging.  The United States is at its weakest, has fewer allies, and has less military and diplomatic influence than at any time since before World War II.

One wonders if there is a remaining ally nation that trusts him.  And worse, no American enemy fears him. If you are a free movement (the democratic Iranian and Syrian oppositions) or a free country ( Israel ),you have little or no reason to believe that you have a steadfast ally in the United States .  Even non-democratic allies no longer trust America.  Barack Obama has alienated our most important and longest standing Arab allies, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.  Both the anti-Muslim Brotherhood and the anti-Iran Arab states have lost respect for him.
And his complete withdrawal of American troops from Iraq has left that country with weekly bloodbaths.

Virtually nothing Barack Obama has done has left America or the world better since he became president.  Nearly everything he has touched has been made worse.

He did, however, promise before the 2008 election that "We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America."  That is the one promise he has kept.

What does it take for the American people to WAKE UP?
Send this to your friends - we are losing this country!

Monday, November 4, 2013

The Emperor Arrives in London








Another excellent email that I received the other day and felt that it needed as much exposure as I was able to give it.







Subject: FW: Fw: The Emperor Arrives In London.
CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS !!!!!

Do you really think that this is necessary, especially from a country that is going broke?
THE EMPEROR ARRIVES IN LONDON... Notice this is an English Newspaper, not an American one reporting.
If you're not sure what "BIG GOVERNMENT"

implies, look at this:But you have already read

about this in your local newspaper ... Oh no,

you didn't? OK then, you saw it on CNN...

No?... INTERESTING! You and I may never

see health care again the way it used to be,

but "Emperor Obama" took six (6) doctors 

with him for a 3 day visit to London - along

with 494 other essential staff.
You just gotta love this spread-the-wealth,

hopey-changey thing.

Saturday, February 2, 2013

Why Retirement was Invented

As I slowly finished my day the other day - I realized how little that I had gotten done during the whole day...it was really depressing.  I can remember when I had 3 rug rats and  a couple of  dogs underfoot and I still managed to do several loads of laundry...fix meals...keep the house up ( notice, I didn't say "clean")...do all the bookkeeping for the house and a busy dental office...and have enough energy at the end of the day to do something fun.  Today I'm lucky if I can find my bed at the end of the day after doing very little.

One hundred years ago - people didn't retire, they  usually died before they had reached a retirement age.  We were a much more agrarian society, and no matter how old you were - if you were on a farm, you worked.  Even in the thirties when FDR invented social security, our life expectancy was considerably lower than it is today, and not that big a percentage of the population was around to collect...and if they did collect, it wasn't for a long period of time.

Today, we are living longer and supposedly, enjoying it more.  I'm not sure that I agree totally with that statement, but I'm trying to.  This month has been an example of how you don't want to spend your retirement.  We're into the third week here - so there have been about 15 working days this month...we were out of town for three days and I think I've had doctors' appointments on the other 12, or close to it.  I've been to the heart clinic for appointments twice. Had blood taken three times.  I've had two appointments with my G.P.. I've had two dental appointments and an appointment with an endodontist and got the scintillating news that I need a root canal...OH HAPPY DAY! ! ! The days that I didn't have an appointment, my husband did.  This is no way to spend those golden years - I don't even have time to make my jewelry that I love and sell at my online  shop.  This isn't fun - it's work.

I turned 70 this month - so not only am I not having fun, I'm feeling very old. Do you remember when you were a kid and how old 30 - 40 - 50 sounded?  Well, even as a dues paying real  adult, I thought that 70 was old.  And dear God....I am now there.  It is a scary thought. I'm hoping that things pick up soon and we can stay away from the doctor for a few months.  I'm also hoping that life becomes fun again - not just one medical problem, appointment, crisis etc. etc.after another.  I had a friend who used to say that after 50 it was patch, patch , patch....well, right now I'd like to replace the whole shebang rather than doing any more of this damn ( pardon me) patching.

Okay - back to my title - why they invented retirement. No gainfully employed person could have the number of appointments that I've had in the last three weeks and maintain their job. Secondly, no one's production could have dropped  as much as mine has and kept a job. "They" had to invent something so that seniors wouldn't get too depressed...and retirement was it.  It's okay if all you got done today was one load of clothes and a visit to the dentist -  such a minuscule accomplishment  is acceptable because you're retired. So I really think that they invented retirement as a face saving gesture for the older generation  -  can't do that any more???? That's okay, you're retired.

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

The Web is a Wondrous Thing



The web is a wondrous thing - especially for someone who grew up when encyclopedias were the only way to go.  I was such a nerd...that I used to read the encyclopedia like it was a good book.  Maybe that's why I have trouble with the web.

People say that you can find anything that you want on the web...and I guess that you can...but you can also find things that you don't want ( I am not referring to porn here).  Every time that I start searching for something that is relatively new to me...I end up all over the place.  The web tempts me with all kinds of  new information that I feel compelled to follow up on. By the time that I am done purusing all this needless information - I can rarely find my way back to where I really need to be. These searches can be very time consuming and that makes them expensive for me - I am an artisan jeweler...with a shop on the web, that you really should visit...and time is money for me. I honestly don't know what I was looking for last night, but I ended up watching some videos on coloring metal and they mentioned a craft pad.  It sounded great - didn't leak - liquids just sat there - you could wash anything off it....something that I just had to have.

So I proceeded to search for these little miracles and found one for about $15.00 somewhere.  Then I saw something from a woman who was buying oven liners at Walmart and using them for the same purpose at 1/3rd the price.  Sounded good to me - until I found the stuff at the bottom of her page that said she was all wet...that the oven liners didn't work like the craft pad, but what this women had found, was working well at 1/2 the cost.  I wasted allot of time on these stupid pads.

I got up this morning to the realization that I should have just bought the $15.00 one and not wasted all that time looking for cheaper alternatives - I figured that I'd blown anything that I would have saved with all the time I spent looking for a cheaper product.  No sweat, I said to myself, I had to go to Michael's Craft Store today and I'd just pick one up.  Guess what....they had no idea what I was talking about...Zip ... Nada ... Nothing.

I came home - used an old paint dish from my tole painting days and decided that what I really didn't like were the patina's and acid paints that I had bought to color my metals....you know, some days you just can't win.....

Friday, August 24, 2012

Optimizing your Blogs

I posted a blog about a week ago and proceeded to announce it in the usual places that one announces these things....especially for someone who is an admitted technotard.  I put it on both my face book pages and I  went to the forums on Artfire where I have my online shop and I posted it there.  Along with some nice comments, I got a response from a computer guru, Jim  Juris , who is on Artfire also, and he told me that I needed to optimize my blog titles so that they would be picked up in Google searches.  So I have just finished changing the titles of a number of my blogs - and I like my original titles much better than the optimized ones...but I must admit that optimizing them makes sense.

I love writing blogs - they're fun - it's fun to transfer my pre-retirement knowledge (professional practice management) to a new venue, making jewelry and the business involved in selling your jewelry.  I love sharing pictures of what I am currently doing and also, what I am currently thinking...which is sometimes scary to see in black and white...but still fun to share.  It makes sense to try to get more people looking at all this....but it's just like putting my jewelry in my shop...I'd love to have some cute name instead of  something that google is going to look at.  So much of what we do is predicated by the rules of the web and I truly wish it were otherwise....but, it isn't.

As I have said many times, I am truly a technotard - I survive in this new technical world but not without allot of blood, sweat, and tears.  I honestly thought that by putting good labels or tags on my blogs that Google would pick them up, but that is rarely the case. I am always amazed that almost 4000 people have read my blogs - but almost 70,000 people have looked at my shop on Artfire in almost the same amount of time...and I have tried very hard to optimize the titles of my jewelry, but not my blogs.  So I definitely feel that old Jim is probably on to something that we all should be aware of.. It's a cold cruel economy and world out there and any little edge that we can get to get more people looking at what we are selling is better than good...it may just be fantastic.

Those are my thoughts for today and I hope that they help...til next time