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Update June 11, 2016 Hens, Signs, Crooks and Elections
Money Matters Airs July 7th, 2016 (no show the rest of the month)
All past shows on this website for free download in case you missed a show.
Marc's Notes:
Markets up, Markets down. What to do, What to do. Keep reading, all sorts of good stuff below:
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This pretty much says it all………
Read my article below!
With the elections coming up and big money riding on it, besides the most powerful office in the world, you have to wonder what the average Joe is thinking as his voting time approaches.
Wall Street claims a Trump victory might crash the markets and Hillary thrashers say she just represents the status quo and a vote for her would mean the Wall Street party continues.
No matter which side of the aisle you sit, one thing is for sure, the stakes are high and the air is heated.
Driving through our county, I noticed the Trump signs were far and few between, Hillary signs were more prevalent and the Bernie supporters tended to paint their cars with his name and make their own signs. Locally we also had an anti-pot bill on our local ballots so the tension was almost palatable.
As I drove thru town on a daily basis I noticed where a Trump or anti-pot signs stood was soon to be a vacant spot. In other words it seemed as if the anti-pot and Trump signs were disappearing. Stolen I thought? Not in today’s America. But my daily drives caused me to think otherwise.
I own 2 empty lots in 2 separate towns in my county so I decided to do an experiment.
I placed one of each sign on each lot. I had one Hillary, one Trump, one Bernie, one anti-pot and one pro-pot sign. 10 signs total, 5 on each lot.
Within two days the anti-pot and Trump signs were stolen. I replaced the signs and this time hung the Trump sign about 15 feet up in a tree. One day later on one lot and three days later on other lot both the Trump and anti-pot signs were stolen again.
I pondered: Who would do such a thing? And climb up a tree to do it the second time around?
The pro-pot signs say “for a fair government” yet if the pro-pot people were stealing the anti-pot signs (we can assume this is true) how is stealing a sign fair anything?
In fact stealing a sign is the epitome of unfairness. Don’t the sign stealers believe in free elections? After all, they talk about leveling the playing income field and equality for all yet don’t practice that equality when it comes to people’s rights to hang a sign on their own property.
Is their position is so weak they are afraid of an opposing one?
I have heard arguments from the pro-pot crowd that they want less government intrusion yet the left leaning candidates advocate even a bigger government than we have now.
On the right side of the aisle, the candidate is an unproven billionaire with no public servant experience. Needless to say, Trump has said things publically that I thought would have sunk any candidate that muttered such things.
Yet Trump seems like the old “Teflon Don” where nothing he says or does seems to sink him.
From stolen election signs to a socialist candidate to an old boy (well, old girl) candidate where the Clinton name smells of dynasty, to a reality TV star and billionaire, we indeed have one the most interesting elections in recent history.
November seems to be shaping up for one hell of month. Now if only I could keep my signs up so I can participate in the “free” election process. Guess I will just have to cast my vote and leave the signs in the trash. They seem to end up there anyway, or at least some of them do.
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This is a Guinea Hen chick. My daughter just brought home two of them, not that big as you can see.
I think I may have found the stupidest animal on the planet. First off, they are cute as hell when they are the size of a golf ball, but that was like 8 seconds ago. Now they are bigger than bread baskets and by the time you finish reading this probably the size of a good size volleyball. They eat (and s**t) like CRAZY so now the mystery on how they grow so fast is no mystery at all.
They stink and the cage has to be cleaned like every three hours, it’s that bad.
Talk about s**t for brains, that would be an improvement. They hate being held, probably because I hear they taste better than chicken so it’s like Filet Mignon to predators. Trying to hold one, even one this size, is like trying to put a Tyrannosaurus Rex under your tongue. It’s VERY hard to do and not the best of ideas.
They also scratch like hell and possess very sharp claws.
Not sharp like the killer “Death Cactus” sharp but sharp none the less and sharp enough to do some damage to human skin.
Let us pause for brief lesson on the Death Cactus- stay with me....
The Death Cactus, which is my name for it, is the world’s most hideous plant yet virtually indestructible. I got it near a Dow Chemical Plant that used to make Agent Orange during the Vietnam War. At that time they also made something called Vikane gas, a cockroach killer (pretty ominous sounding eh?)
Most of the cars in the parking lot were peeling chrome off their bumpers, it’s that bad they told me. Keep in mind the bug killer is designed to kill the most survivable creature (and probably the oldest) on earth, the proverbial cockroach.
Anyway near this factory, I nary saw a plant except this hideous cactus 12 feet tall and all knurled up with the sharpest spines on earth.
They go right THROUGH leather gloves, cowboy boots and almost went through the pair of plyers I used to break off a piece. It grows anywhere and I mean anywhere. Drop it on dirt, no need to plant it. Like a space alien, over a few days it rights itself and starts growing. The older it gets or the drier it gets, the sharper the spines.
It needs no water. I know because I have tried to kill various plantings of it by ignoring it.
It cares not.
I planted it in a knot up in a tree, it grew. I also have some in a pot nailed to the side of tree, never water it and it thrives. Freezing temperature turns it black and it looks dead but don’t be fooled. It is waiting for you to turn your back on it. From one tiny sprig you can get a thousand plants as every piece will grow no matter where you put it. I had one that grew on a brick. No roots, nothing. It just sat there and got bigger. Scary s**t.
Plant it under a window and I GUARANTEE no burglar will enter. He may foolishly attempt it but you will likely find him impaled on this thing in the morning.
Either that or a body part or two will be left and certainly a lot of blood. I have tried to give pieces of this plant away but no one will take it. It is now a white elephant gift I force on people as a cruel joke. Beware this plant. It is a son of a bitch.
Now back to the Guinea Hens.....
Anyway the claws of the Guinea Hen will do skin damage and these hens squirm like hell when held. if you don’t hold both feet and body in a fist prepare to be harmed. They don’t bite thank God but take it from me, they DO NOT like to be held.
They are without a doubt dumber than a retarded clam. They peep and peck at everything. Hold one and peep, peep, peep.
Put one down and they peck even at solid rock or metal. They walk like a small ostrich.The look in their eyes and mannerism say “look at me, I am at the bottom of the food chain and as dumb as they get” all of is true.
God, however, not being without compassion, gave them one quality that prevents them from being eaten into extinction. They run like hell.
Mine aren’t even that big and they can scoot. The good news is if two of them get loose, they stick together. That, luck for me, means they don’t run in opposite directions of each other.
So I let our two out by mistake and said “oh s**t, there they go, I will never catch them and my daughter will then kill me”.
AHHHH, but not so fast. Since they stick together, both bolted in opposite directions, but only for a second. As soon as they realized they were separated they both stopped. THANK GOD!
Like two Siamese Twins, but tethered by an invisible thread, they are too stupid to coordinate an agreed upon escape route. So when one ran, he got farther away from the other and stopped. “Ah” I thought, “my chance and thank you God!”
Grabbing one, I placed it in the cage and the other, too stupid to go it alone, halted long enough for me to grab it. I tossed it in with the other and now they were both caught again, blaming each other for their cursed codependency.
I, on the other hand, worshipped Allah on my Persian rug facing east (or is it north?) for making them codependent so I did not have to face the wrath of my 11 year old daughter and subsequently her mother for my stupidity by letting them out.
Whew!~
So we have two hens and soon to get more. I hear they are good for bugs as in they eat them. The flock (or is it gaggle) run together and stay around if you feed them. At night they roost in the trees so the mortality rate due to predators is an acceptable 1% a year, much like drone collateral damage in the Middle-East.
After all, if the government can accept a 1% collateral damage on innocents killed by drones, I can certainly not lose sleep over a missing Guinea or two a year now can I?
A friend has like 50 (he had like 60 but he has had them a few years hence the 1% is taking its toll) and told me the worst predator is the hawk. (Big thanks to Dr. Sean Avera for enlightening me to this fact and if you need a good periodontist look him up).
Anyway apparently hawks LOVE slow and delicious birds and apparently hit them on the ground in dive bomb attack going about 30 MPH and leave a trail much like a crashed airliner into a hillside. A 15 foot swath trail of destruction marred in blood, guts and feathers.
I picture that in my head and some sick part of me says “Man o man, I gotta see that!”
(Sick I know).
So for now we have two of these prehistoric birds and look to get more. I vision a running triangle of hens, eating bugs and ticks and keeping me company on hot days as I bask in the pool. POOL! Oh crap, I hope they don’t mess with my pool! I better ask Sean about that.
Well if they do mess with my pool, I do have an airsoft gun. The hens look big enough to survive an airsoft hit so that might be quite the game:
Guinea airsoft target practice. Yea baby.
All in all I don’t know how this whole Guinea thing will work out. It certainly SOUNDS like a good idea.
Fairly hassle free, free running, bug eating, self-docking birds, kind of like the Roomba vacuum that runs around the house and parks itself when done.
Then again I have had LOTS of ideas that sounded good at the time (think after a shot or two of tequila) and then lived to that decision regret it later.
However I am not imbibing, nor have I been at any time while pondering these stupid birds and my owning them yet something in the reptilian part of my cerebral cortex is saying (beside “eat them Marc”) that some other fate awaits me as things just aren’t that easy.
I mean, get a roaming bird that won’t run away, eats all the bugs, self-parks itself in the trees at night, and basically doing all of that without me having to deal with them?
Hummm…….
I have my fingers crossed. I hope to hell they have an appetite for Death Cactus.
Jambo!
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The biggest scam on Wall Street involved a former head of the Nasdaq stock exchange Bernie Madoff.
He was convicted of running a Ponzi scheme named after investor Charles Ponzi. The Ponzi scheme is a simple one and an old scam. Much like a pyramid scheme, you simply claim outrageous returns, and pay investors interest on their money with money from new investors. No money is ever really made, you just take it from the new investors and give it to the older investors. You claim to be making money but in reality you are not.
The Madoff scam was one of the biggest headlines in the news at the time.
It was said schemes like this are what happens when easy money and credit pour out of the monetary authorities in the way of low interest rates and then finds its way into the latest and greatest of bubbles.
There are many disturbing facts surrounding this case, one being the Bernie Madoff was indeed the head of the Nasdaq stock exchange a few short years ago before the scheme surface at his firm, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC in 1960, and Madoff was its chairman until his arrest on December 11, 2008
He apparently learned his trade well heading up one of our most lucrative US stock exchanges.
You have to wonder when the former head of one of our biggest exchanges morphs into a crook, what kind of people are overseeing our retirement funds and stock account money.
Madoff’s scheme netted somewhere in the area of 50 billion dollars or so.
Interestingly, the SEC, the regulatory agency which is supposed to police things like this, had received numerous reports about the possibility of scam and even looked into the firm multiple times and found nothing. That spawns the question, what kind of regulatory body is the SEC and how effective they really are.
The Congress is always calling for more regulations, but what good are more regulations when you miss obvious scams with the rules you do have.
More rules won’t solve the problem if the authorities don’t use those rules in their practice of oversight.
The SEC had plenty of ways to shut Madoff down should they have found something but they did not.
Did they simply look the other way? Did the proverbial “old boy” network have anything to do with the lack of discovery even though the complaints were numerous?
Although Madoff was hauled off to the hoosegow for his Ponzi-like scheme, most governments of the world could be said to operate the exact same scheme.
One example might be the Social Security system. This was originally and still labeled a trust fund which means our retirement money is supposed to be locked away, safe and sound and paid out when we retire.
But the Government spends all of it and has for years.
They just pay current entitlements with money from new workers and put in IOU’s to make up any shortfall. Sounds like a Ponzi scheme to me, the exact same thing Madoff was forced to put on an orange jumpsuit for.
The money system of the Federal Reserve also has similar qualities.
The Federal Reserve prints money at will and buys Treasuries from another branch of the government. They then issue these Treasuries as IOUS. When the IOUS come due, they just buy back these IOUS with more printed money, in essence buying back its own debt with more debt.
This is similar to using new investor’s money to pay old investors. The Feds take it one step further and conjures up more money from nothingness with a computer keystroke. Madoff himself never went that far!
It could be argued there is little difference between what Madoff did and what the U.S. Government does everyday. But Madoffs problem was he is not the U.S. government and also didn’t own a printing press of which the US Government does.
Madoff’s went to prison because of the way he handled other people money, illegally.
But that particular illegality isn’t all inclusive to everyone and every institution.
The same type of thing is used to finance our country and many of our governmental programs. I guess the eyes of justice aren’t so blind after all. It might be said they look the other way where the government is involved.
