Dad, NFL Players, Courage & Dallas Police

My dad was a cop.  He was a cop for a long time.  Sometimes when he was called out in the middle of the night my Mom would cry.  His backup was himself.  There were no backups in the 60's on Ft. Berthold, there was no dispatch in the middle of the night.  Sometimes he came home with blood on his clothes.  He was also a cop in the poorest county in the United States of America. He was not only a cop he became Chief of Police on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in Pine Ridge, SD. My dad had courage.  My dad had a family to feed.  Let me tell you about courage.

Real courage is the Dallas Police running towards gunfire to protect fellow citizens.

Real courage is putting on a uniform for more than one day and going to work with the real possibility of not coming home because you can be killed in the line of action trying to protect citizens.

Real courage is doing that every day in some of America's most dangerous places to serve the public and for a tiny percentage of what high-priced professional athletes make, in communities that I am certain Colin Kaepernick does not live remotely close to.

I wish most Americans had a modicum of courage and could understand what freedom is truly about.

They don't. Most  are clueless about what cops like my Dad did while serving their country during war time.  There are alot of veterans with a whole lot of courage.  Guys like my friends, Gary Meis and Paul Sutcliff come to mind.

And that is what pisses me off.   Clueless Americans.  Look around, they seem to be everywhere.

Most of what everyone wants in life is on the other side of fear.

Courage, dam hard to find yet everyone thinks they are entitled to it.

Hillary Clinton has some answers to fabricate fairly soon..........

Judicial Watch announced on its website today that it has submitted a list of 25 questions to Hillary Clinton regarding her email practices while serving as Secretary of State.  Pursuant to a decision by U.S. District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan, Hillary has 30 days to respond, under oath, to the questions.  Per federal law, Judicial Watch was limited to a total of 25 questions.

All 25 questions are included in their entirety below (we've highlighted some of the particularly amusing ones):

1. Describe the creation of the clintonemail.com system, including who decided to create the system, the date it was decided to create the system, why it was created, who set it up, and when it became operational.
2. Describe the creation of your clintonemail.com email account, including who decided to create it, when it was created, why it was created, and, if you did not set up the account yourself, who set it up for you.
3. When did you decide to use a clintonemail.com email account to conduct official State Department business and whom did you consult in making this decision?
4. Identify all communications in which you participated concerning or relating to your decision to use a clintonemail.com email account to conduct official State Department business and, for each communication, identify the time, date, place, manner (e.g., in person, in writing, by telephone, or by electronic or other means), persons present or participating, and content of the communication.
5. In a 60 Minutes interview aired on July 24, 2016, you stated that it was “recommended” you use a personal email account to conduct official State Department business. What recommendations were you given about using or not using a personal email account to conduct official State Department business, who made any such recommendations, and when were any such recommendations made?
6. Were you ever advised, cautioned, or warned, was it ever suggested, or did you ever participate in any communication, conversation, or meeting in which it was discussed that your use of a clintonemail.com email account to conduct official State Department business conflicted with or violated federal recordkeeping laws. For each instance in which you were so advised, cautioned or warned, in which such a suggestion was made, or in which such a discussion took place, identify the time, date, place, manner (e.g., in person, in writing, by telephone, or by electronic or other means), persons present or participating, and content of the advice, caution, warning, suggestion, or discussion.
7. Your campaign website states, “When Clinton got to the Department, she opted to use her personal email account as a matter of convenience.” What factors other than convenience did you consider in deciding to use a personal email account to conduct official State Department business? Include in your answer whether you considered federal records management and preservation requirements and how email you used to conduct official State Department business would be searched in response to FOIA requests.
8. After President Obama nominated you to be Secretary of State and during your tenure as secretary, did you expect the State Department to receive FOIA requests for or concerning your email?
9. During your tenure as Secretary of State, did you understand that email you sent or received in the course of conducting official State Department business was subject to FOIA?
10. During your tenure as Secretary of State, how did you manage and preserve emails in your clintonemail.com email account sent or received in the course of conducting official State Department business, and what, if anything, did you do to make those emails available to the Department for conducting searches in response to FOIA requests?
11. During your tenure as Secretary of State, what, if any, effort did you make to inform the State Department’s records management personnel (e.g., Clarence Finney or the Executive Secretariat’s Office of Correspondence and Records) about your use of a clintonemail.com email account to conduct official State Department business?
12. During your tenure as Secretary of State, did State Department personnel ever request access to your clintonemail.com email account to search for email responsive to a FOIA request? If so, identify the date access to your account was requested, the person or persons requesting access, and whether access was granted or denied.
13. At the time you decided to use your clintonemail.com email account to conduct official State Department business, or at any time thereafter during your tenure as Secretary of State, did you consider how emails you sent to or received from persons who did not have State Department email accounts (i.e., “state.gov” accounts) would be maintained and preserved by the Department or searched by the Department in response to FOIA requests? If so, what was your understanding about how such emails would be maintained, preserved, or searched by the Department in response to FOIA requests?
14. On March 6, 2009, Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomatic Security Eric J. Boswell wrote in an Information Memo to your Chief of Staff, Cheryl Mills, that he “cannot stress too strongly, however, that any unclassified BlackBerry is highly vulnerable in any setting to remotely and covertly monitoring conversations, retrieving email, and exploiting calendars.” A March 11, 2009 email states that, in a management meeting with the assistant secretaries, you approached Assistant Secretary Boswell and mentioned that you had read the “IM” and that you “get it.” Did you review the March 6, 2009 Information Memo, and, if so, why did you continue using an unclassified BlackBerry to access your clintonemail.com email account to conduct official State Department business? Copies of the March 6, 2009 Information Memo and March 11, 2009 email are attached as Exhibit A for your review.
15. In a November 13, 2010 email exchange with Huma Abedin about problems with your clintonemail.com email account, you wrote to Ms. Abedin, in response to her suggestion that you use a State Department email account or release your email address to the Department, “Let’s get a separate address or device.” Why did you continue using your clintonemail.com email account to conduct official State Department business after agreeing on November 13, 2010 to “get a separate address or device?” Include in your answer whether by “address” you meant an official State Department email account (i.e., a “state.gov” account) and by “device” you meant a State Department-issued BlackBerry. A copy of the November 13, 2010 email exchange with Ms. Abedin is attached as Exhibit B for your review.
16. Email exchanges among your top aides and assistants in August 30, 2011 discuss providing you with a State Department-issued BlackBerry or State Department email address. In the course of these discussions, State Department Executive Secretary Stephen Mull wrote, “[W]e are working to provide the Secretary per her request a Department issued BlackBerry to replace her personal unit which is malfunctioning (possibly because of her personal email server is down). We will prepare two versions for her to use – one with an operating State Department email account (which would mask her identity, but which would also be subject to FOIA requests).” Similarly, John Bentel, the Director of Information and Records Management in the Executive Secretariat, wrote, “You should be aware that any email would go through the Department’s infrastructure and [be] subject to FOIA searches.” Did you request a State Department issued Blackberry or a State Department email account in or around August 2011, and, if so, why did you continue using your personal device and clintonemail.com email account to conduct official State Department business instead of replacing your device and account with a State Department-issued BlackBerry or a State Department email account? Include in your answer whether the fact that a State Department-issued BlackBerry or a State Department email address would be subject to FOIA affected your decision. Copies of the email exchanges are attached as Exhibit C for your review.
17. In February 2011, Assistant Secretary Boswell sent you an Information Memo noting “a dramatic increase since January 2011 in attempts . . . to compromise the private home email accounts of senior Department officials.” Assistant Secretary Boswell “urge[d] Department users to minimize the use of personal web-email for business.” Did you review Assistant Secretary Boswell’s Information Memo in or after February 2011, and, if so, why did you continue using your clintonemail.com email account to conduct official State Department business? Include in your answer any steps you took to minimize use of your clintonemail.com email account after reviewing the memo. A copy of Assistant Secretary Boswell’s February 2011 Information Memo is attached as Exhibit D for your review.
18. On June 28, 2011, you sent a message to all State Department personnel about securing personal email accounts. In the message, you noted “recent targeting of personal email accounts by online adversaries” and directed all personnel to “[a]void conducting official Department business from your personal email accounts.” Why did you continue using your clintonemail.com email account to conduct official State Department business after June 28, 2011, when you were advising all State Department Personnel to avoid doing so? A copy of the June 28, 2011 message is attached as Exhibit E for your review.
19. Were you ever advised, cautioned, or warned about hacking or attempted hacking of your clintonemail.com email account or the server that hosted your clintonemail.com account and, if so, what did you do in response to the advice, caution, or warning?
20. When you were preparing to leave office, did you consider allowing the State Department access to your clintonemail.com email account to manage and preserve the official emails in your account and to search those emails in response to FOIA requests? If you considered allowing access to your email account, why did you decide against it? If you did not consider allowing access to your email account, why not?
21. After you left office, did you believe you could alter, destroy, disclose, or use email you sent or received concerning official State Department business as you saw fit? If not, why not?
22. In late 2014, the State Department asked that you make available to the Department copies of any federal records of which you were aware, “such as an email sent or received on a personal email account while serving as Secretary of State.” After you left office but before your attorneys reviewed the email in your clintonemail.com email account in response to the State Department’s request, did you alter, destroy, disclose, or use any of the email in the account or authorize or instruct that any email in the account be altered, destroyed, disclosed, or used? If so, describe any email that was altered, destroyed, disclosed, or used, when the alteration, destruction, disclosure, or use took place, and the circumstances under which the email was altered, destroyed, disclosed, or used? A copy of a November 12, 2014 letter from Under Secretary of State for Management Patrick F. Kennedy regarding the State Department’s request is attached as Exhibit F for your review.
23. After your lawyers completed their review of the emails in your clintonemail.com email account in late 2014, were the electronic versions of your emails preserved, deleted, or destroyed? If they were deleted or destroyed, what tool or software was used to delete or destroy them, who deleted or destroyed them, and was the deletion or destruction done at your direction?
24. During your October 22, 2015 appearance before the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on Benghazi, you testified that 90 to 95 percent of your emails “were in the State’s system” and “if they wanted to see them, they would certainly have been able to do so.” Identify the basis for this statement, including all facts on which you relied in support of the statement, how and when you became aware of these facts, and, if you were made aware of these facts by or through another person, identify the person who made you aware of these facts.
25. Identify all communications between you and Brian Pagliano concerning or relating to the management, preservation, deletion, or destruction of any emails in your clintonemail.com email account, including any instruction or direction to Mr. Pagliano about the management, preservation, deletion, or destruction of emails in your account when transferring the clintonemail.com email system to any alternate or replacement server. For each communication, identify the time, date, place, manner (e.g., in person, in writing, by telephone, or by electronic or other means), persons present or participating, and content of the communication.

Main Street and the Fed

As I tell young people all the time, the single greatest threat to their financial well-being is the Fed because there is over $4,000,000,000,000.00 sitting on the Fed balance sheet.

They look at me like I just mentioned calculus.

Main Street was banged up in 2008.   The middle class had to stop using their homes as savings banks.  That was a good thing.

Today, the Fed does nothing for Main Street.  Here is Stanley Fischer of the Fed..........

FISCHER: Well, clearly there are different responses to negative rates. If you’re a saver, they’re very difficult to deal with and to accept, although typically they go along with quite decent equity prices. But we consider all that and we have to make trade-offs in economics all the time and the idea is the lower the interest rate the better it is for investors.

And there you have it: ignore the economy, it's all about "decent equity prices" and whatever is "better for investors." We point this bizarre justification for the central banks' latest failure, just in case there was still any confusion why they keep pushing the same failed policies day after day: it's all about keeping stocks artificially inflated.

Now remember this, in June 2011, Fischer applied for the post of IMF managing director to replace Dominique Strauss-Kahn, but was barred as the IMF stipulates that a new managing director must be no older than 65, and he was 67 at the time.

This is where we are today.  Tax reciepts are down at the corporate and personal level.  Productivity is down while GDP is under 2%.  

 Mr. Fischer said,  "employment is very close to full employment."

With that statement, Stanley Fischer may have just become the biggest liar in the history of the Federal Reserve Bank, which, in itself, has a history of pathologically lying Fed Governors. How does having the historically largest number and percentage of working age male Americans out of the workforce and having over 70% of new jobs created being part-time and/or minimum wage jobs equate to anything near "full employment"?

Deadliest Interstate in America is in Georgia

Dallas Fed

Having jumped miraculously from -18 to -1.3 in July, August's Dallas Fed plunged back to -6.2 - contracting for the 20th month in a row. The worse than expected headline data came despite a rise in new orders as the number of employees, average workweek, and capex all plunged into contraction. Hope also tumbled from 18.4 to 7.0 with inventories and new orders expected to slow.

Despite the surge in oil prices, the Dallas economy continues to contract...

With all the cranes and construction around the Dallas Fed building you would think the hipsters could have fabricated some better numbers! The truth is so 80's.

However, it wasn't the notoriously volatile data that attracted our attention, but rather the sampling of traditionally outspoken, well-formulated responses said as part of the survey. Here are some selected highlights:

• The global economies and the U.S. economy are very weak and uncertain.
• U.S. manufacturing is suffering because of the high dollar value.
• A good indication of business outlook is how many calls we get from truckers looking for freight business. On one day we received four calls. It was probably more calls than orders we received for the day.
• Refinery margins continue under pressure and the level of spending on equipment is being reduced significantly. I believe that the continued low level of spending will result in several providers going out of business. The market is getting very tough.
• Pricing has deteriorated to win bids, and many projects seem to be on hold. Owners are reevaluating capital expenditures priorities or deferring them all together.
• Despite some "hoopla" about construction metrics being strong, we seem to be on a plateau. Business is up and down some month to month, but no real growth year to year.
• Our increases are new product orders and not from existing products. Demand for existing products ranges from no change to worse.
• We are very busy right now, which is normal for this time of year. We are not sure how the next six months will pan out. We are very worried about persistent slowness of our customers, which does not bode well for us down the road unless things pick up soon for them.

The following analysis could have been penned by any econobserver who has not been captured by the system quite yet:

• Department of Labor rules and regulations are slowing growth and reducing hiring due to increased management time spent on compliance and higher costs of labor. Current efforts to bring foreign production to the U.S. are significantly reduced due to labor costs and because worker productivity remains low, especially for entry-level or unskilled workers. Taxes, costs and inefficiencies of exporting are reducing competitiveness in overseas markets. The lack of local support for foreign trade zones is causing our company to consider alternatives, including relocating and growing elsewhere that offers them. Growth and improvement for our company is primarily by product innovation overcoming a worsening business climate.

And finally, the punchline:

• Sometime after the election, historical data will show that in 2016 the U.S. was in recession.

The Entitlement Crowd!!!

Lochte, Gold Medalist, and fellow Olympians having everything going their way, endorsements, speaking engagements, idolized by children and the masses, find the need to vandalize convenience store restroom, urinate on walls, and then fabricate a bullshit story to cover their asses.  Just how stupid do you have to be.  

Arianna Huffington

She built one of the best liberal propaganda "news" outlets and is moving on.  LMFAO!

In all the years since Armstrong wasted shareholder money on that rag, I never once read an honest article.

From Simon Black, www.sovereignman.com

Long ago in the Land of the Free, if you wanted to start a saloon, you rented a space and started serving booze.

You didn’t have to go through years of petitioning a bunch of bureaucrats for permits and licenses.

If you weren’t qualified or good enough at your job, your reputation would suffer and you’d go out of business.

This is the way it used to be for just about every industry and profession.

It wasn’t until 1889 that the US Supreme Court ruled in Dent v. West Virginia that states had the right to impose “reasonable” certifications or licenses for various professions.

At first, most states only licensed physicians, dentists, and lawyers.

In fact, by 1920, only about 30 occupations in the US required any sort of licensing.

By the 1950s, about 5% of US workers required a license to perform his/her job.

Today that number has risen to 30%, and climbing.

Some of our modern examples are completely insane.

According to the Brookings Institute, the state of Nevada requires 733 days of training and a $1,500 fee for a license… just to become a tour guide.

Over in Michigan, it takes 1,460 days of education to become an athletic trainer.

45 other states have license or certification requirements for athletic trainers. All fifty states have licenses for barbers and cosmetologists.

36 states require licenses for make-up artists. 34 states license milk samplers. And a mere 33 states license auctioneers.

These license requirements continue to grow, along with the overall level of rules and regulations in the Land of the Free.

Just this morning the US government published an extra 227 pages of rules, regulations, and proposals.

This happens every single business day in America.

Last week the government published over 2,000 pages of new rules, many of which border on absurdity.

To give you an idea, USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service proposed a rule about minimum and maximum diameters of potatoes that are sold in the State of Colorado.

Yes I’m serious.

This is the sort of madness that government bureaucrats churn out on a daily basis: more rules, more licenses.

Needless to say, the more of these rules they create, the more difficult it becomes for people and businesses to produce.

So it wasn’t exactly a big surprise when the US Labor Department released statistics a few days ago showing that, for the third straight quarter in a row, productivity in the Land of the Free declined.

In other words, US workers are producing less than they did before.

We haven’t seen this trend since 1979. And it’s the exact opposite of what’s supposed to happen.

As workers get more experienced and technologically advanced, productivity should grow.

But it’s not. US production is buried under countless pages of regulations and licensing requirements. And the trend has been negative for quite some time.

From 2000 through 2007, US productivity was about 2.6%.

Between 2007 and 2015, it shrank by half to about 1.3%, barely keeping up with population growth.

Now productivity is actually shrinking. America is going backward.

But there’s another side to this story.

Because while US economic growth has practically halted and productivity is shrinking, DEBT CONSUMPTION is up. Way up.

Americans are once again indebting themselves, often to buy useless things they don’t really need.

Auto loans and credit card debt are just two categories registering significant upticks.

(Not to be left out, the US government is leading with way with an absolute explosion in federal debt…)

So what we’re basically seeing now in the Land of the Free is people going into debt to consume more, while simultaneously producing less.

This is a pretty dangerous trend.

Human beings realized 10,000 years ago that if they wanted to survive, they had to produce more than they consumed.

During the Agricultural Revolution our early ancestors learned that, instead of constantly hunting for game, they could plant seeds in the ground and produce more food than they could possibly eat.

You and I wouldn’t be here if they hadn’t figured out this simple principle.

I call it the Universal Law of Prosperity, and it applies to governments, businesses, and individuals alike.

Any nation that fails to produce more than it consumes is in for serious trouble. And the government’s own data is showing that this is happening.

They create countless rules, regulations, and licensing requirements to make it more difficult to produce… and we can already see the results with (lack of) GDP growth.

Meanwhile they’ve slashed interest rates down to zero to incentivize people to consume.

It’s not hard to see where this trend is going.

So easy a 3rd grader could understand it....................

In the first episode of HBO's Hard Knocks, Rams coach Jeff Fisher stood before his team prior to training camp and explained the rules: Be on time and no visitors in the dorm rooms.

Smash cut to wide receiver Deon Long sitting in Fisher's office trying to explain why he had a woman in his room after curfew.

The explanation didn't fly.

"We're going to cut you," Fisher told Long, before adding: "What part of the rules, what part of 'no female guests in the room,' did you not understand?" The coach added: "Sorry, but this is our world, man. We have rules and we have to abide by them. Not the first time I've done this for this particular violation, but I thought I made myself really clear."

Jawga on a rainy day...............

On a rainy day in Georgia I wonder how many heads will roll down at the world headquarters of Don't  Ever Leave The Airport, DELTA?    What a crock of misinformation that bunch touts!   Almost as bad as every aspect of economic data from our own government offices.   Believe at your own financial peril.

Recently on a trip across America via our nations Interstate systems I was amazed at how many professional truckers are texting and driving.    It is only getting worse.

Why won't Trump give up on the "thumbs up"?  

The quagmire of debt that will be inherited from Obama for the next President is unfathomable.

Our lame worthless Congress and Senators sit idly by as more American boots hit the ground in the Middle East.   It must be time for campaign contributions to roll in for re-election.  Put the MIC to work and look what coffers get filled up.   Wars are about money boys and girls, don't ever forget it.

I said months ago that spraying for ZIKA infected mosquitoes in Florida will do zero good.   It appears to have done a few things, namely shutting down all of the outdoor eateries in the spray zone!

Thank our United States Air Force for keeping our nuclear capability at the ready, 24/7/365.   Can't imagine a more motivated bunch deterring harm to this great nation.   #forevergrateful