This home cost a reported $10 Million USD. That is 8,027,600.00 British Pound Sterling. Isn’t it wonderful to be wealthy? Well, of course. Money makes every issue of life just a little bit easier. We should congratulate them on the upcoming birth of twins.
I want to thank 503me’s Blog for bringing the description below of fascism to my attention.
All this talk about Donald Trump being a fascist has no real basis. It’s just Democratic Party clap trap. Right?
If that is so then explain this on blog with postings in the year 2005 on a site named MetaFilter.
February 9, 2005 7:47 AM Subscribe
“Wake up and smell the fascism” ??? Me-Fites seem to be concerned with fascism in America recently. We’ve secretly replaced their regular government with new Folger’s Crystals! Let’s see if they notice the difference! posted by spock (74 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
Well, hell. Hitler was voted in, too. But that can’t happen here….right? posted by cows of industry at 7:53 AM on February 9, 2005
I googled the name of Dr. Lawrence Britt, in hopes of finding where he teaches political science. I came up with nothing. No one mentions in any article I came across exactly where he’s based. Even if he is a real political scientist, and doesn’t play one in the papers, it would be a good idea for journalists and online people to provide readers with the man’s basic credentials. posted by raysmj at 7:59 AM on February 9, 2005
My question to everyone is: Do you see any similarities in the behavior of President Donald J. Trump. I admit having a hard time typing the title president in front of his name.
Characteristics Of Fascism
By Dr. Lawrence Britt Source Free Inquiry.co 5-28-03
Dr. Lawrence Britt has examined the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia) and several Latin American regimes. Britt found 14 defining characteristics common to each:
1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism – Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos,slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.
2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights – Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of “need.” The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.
3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause – The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.
4. Supremacy of the Military – Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.
5. Rampant Sexism – The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce, abortion and homosexuality are suppressed and the state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the family institution.
6. Controlled Mass Media – Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.
7. Obsession with National Security – Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.
8. Religion and Government are Intertwined – Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government’s policies or actions.
9. Corporate Power is Protected – The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.
10. Labor Power is Suppressed – Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.
11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts – Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts and letters is openly attacked.
12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment – Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.
13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption – Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.
14. Fraudulent Elections – Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.
From Liberty Forum
http://www.libertyforum.org/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=news_constitution&Number=642
109&page=&view=&sb=&o=&vc=1&t=-1
Update of Dec 26, 2015 posting
This is surprisingly similar to Donald Trump’s opinion. Shouldn’t we support Theodore Roosevelt‘s recommendations?
‘In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin.
But this is predicated upon the person’s becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American…There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn’t an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag… We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language.. And we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people.’ Theodore Roosevelt 1919
He advocated the compulsory learning of English by every naturalized citizen. “Every immigrant who comes here should be required within five years to learn English or to leave the country,” he said in a statement to the Kansas City Star in 1918. “English should be the only language taught or used in the public schools.”
He also insisted, on more than one occasion, that America has no room for what he called “fifty-fifty allegiance.” In a speech made in 1917 he said, “It is our boast that we admit the immigrant to full fellowship and equality with the native-born. In return we demand that he shall share our undivided allegiance to the one flag which floats over all of us.”
Mary Tyler Moore dead at 80. Since I was a fan you know that I too am old. First it was Debbie Reynolds and now Mary. I am just a little younger than both of them but not by much. I loved them both.
By Chris Barton, Contact Reporter for the Los Angeles Times
The news of the death of beloved actress Mary Tyler Moore sparked her fans and the entertainment industry to look back on her distinguished career, which spanned both TV and film.
She first made an unforgettable impression as Laura Petrie, the supportive wife of Rob Petrie, the comedy writer played by Dick Van Dyke in “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” which premiered in 1961 and ran for five seasons. But it was her portrayal of Mary Richards, the single career woman at the center of the iconic workplace comedy “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” that put a defining stamp on TV comedy in the 1970s.
The series was so adored and Moore played Richards with such precise comedic flair and charisma that she and her character almost seemed inseparable, an element that may have affected her subsequent follow-up CBS vehicles, the short-lived variety show “Mary” and “The Mary Tyler Moore Hour,” an awkward hybrid of variety show and sitcom.
Following those shows, she departed her genial TV comedy roots with 1980’s “Ordinary People.” A harrowing look at a wealthy family in tatters after the death of its oldest son, Moore shocked her fans and Hollywood with her revelatory performance as matriarch Beth Jarrett, a wife and mother disconnected from those closest to her. Richards’ icy portrayal was worlds away from her lovable TV personas.
Moore scored an Oscar nomination for best actress for “Ordinary People,” which marked the directorial debut of Robert Redford, and the film won several Oscars, including best picture. In a statement released on Wednesday, Redford recalled Moore’s “courage” in taking on the dark role, calling her performance “enormously powerful.”
Her dramatic triumphs continued that same year when she appeared on Broadway in the right-to-die drama “Whose Life Is It Anyway?” In a gender reversal from the original play, Moore portrayed a sculptor paralyzed after a car crash who argued to end her life. The play, which also starred James Naughton, earned Moore a special honor at that year’s Tony Awards, which she also co-hosted.
Moore returned to television for much of the ‘80s and ‘90s, mostly in a string of generally unheralded TV movies. But she again scored a career highlight with her scene-stealing turn in David O. Russell’s 1996 family comedy “Flirting With Disaster.”
In a movie loaded with absurdist turns by Alan Alda, Lily Tomlin and Josh Brolin, Moore was a standout as the domineering adoptive mother of Ben Stiller’s Mel Coplin, who is attempting to learn his roots. In a role that found Moore memorably flashing her daughter-in-law (Patricia Arquette) to testify as to the importance of a good bra.
The 2000s found Moore appearing in guest roles on a number of comedies, including “The Ellen Show,” “King of the Hill” and “That 70s Show,” where she appeared in a multi-episode arc as a tightly wound TV host. Most recently, she reunited with her “Mary Tyler Moore Show” costar Betty White on the TV Land series “Hot in Cleveland” appearing in the premiere of the show’s second season in 2011 and again in 2013.
A big lie (German: große Lüge) is a propaganda technique. The expression was coined by Adolf Hitler, when he dictated his 1925 book Mein Kampf, about the use of a lie so “colossal” that no one would believe that someone “could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.”
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” Joseph Goebbels
Joseph Goebbels, launched a massive campaign to convince the German people that the Jews were their enemies. Having taken over the press, they spread lies blaming Jews for all of Germany’s problems, including the loss of World War I. One outrageous lie dating back to the Middle Ages claimed that Jews engaged in the ritual killings of Christian children and used their blood in the unleavened bread eaten at Passover [source: Landau].
Donald Trump is proving himself to be a fabricator of colossal untruths and an expert liar. Here’s a partial list of false statements he has made: The United States is about to take in 250,000 Syrian refugees; African-Americans are responsible for most white homicides; and during the 9/11 attacks, “thousands and thousands” of people in an unnamed “Arab” community in New Jersey “were cheering as that building was coming down.”
Despite photographs taken at the same time from the same location, Donald Trump’s press secretary insisted that the crowd at the Trump inauguration was at least as big as the crowd at the 2008 inauguration of Barack Obama.
2009 inauguration left 2017 inauguration right
President Donald Trump believes millions of votes were cast illegally in last year’s election. White House press secretary Sean Spicer said that on Tuesday, but he wouldn’t provide any concrete evidence for the claim, which has long been debunked. “The President does believe that, I think he’s stated that before, and stated his concern of voter fraud and people voting illegally during the campaign and continues to maintain that belief based on studies and evidence people have brought to him,” Spicer said.
“Alternative facts” are the words used by Kellyann Conway when confronted by many Sunday morning news shows are all part of the big lie strategy.
Donald Trump’s win of the presidency is not in doubt. No Democrats challenged the election results. Why is he besmirching his win? Will he continue to offer his own reality on other situations?
Perhaps Trump’s focus on his election results is simply Vanity. Merriam Webster definition: the quality of people who have too much pride in their own appearance, abilities, achievements, etc. : the quality of being vain. : something (such as a belief or a way of behaving) which shows that you have too much pride in yourself, your social status, etc.
What will happen when President Donald Trump is confronted with a foreign leader who challenges his position or ideas? I fear the consequences for the United States.
This is not fake news. It was reported on NPR.
Scientists predict that a pair of stars in the constellation Cygnus will collide in 2022, give or take a year, creating an explosion in the night sky so bright that it will be visible to the naked eye.
If it happens, it would be the first time such an event was predicted by scientists.
Calvin College professor Larry Molnar and his team said in a statement that two stars are orbiting each other now and “share a common atmosphere, like two peanuts sharing a single shell.”
They predict those two stars, jointly called KIC 9832227, will eventually “merge and explode … at which time the star will increase its brightness ten thousand fold, becoming one of the brighter stars in the heavens for a time.” That extra-bright star is called a red nova. They recently presented their research at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Grapevine, Texas.
The following was an explanation on the Daily Beast.
For six months this new star will—to the naked eye—be the brightest in the heavens. Given that this is the first time that people will be able to witness a moment like this without technology, it’s a significant event in human history, but it may be much more than that. According to one rabbi, this new star is a sign of the coming of the Messiah.
Rabbi Yosef Berger, a rabbi of King David’s Tomb on Mount Zion, has proposed that the star is a fulfillment of a Biblical prophecy from the book of Numbers, in which a star precedes the arrival of an important military leader: “a star shall come out of Jacob, and a scepter shall rise out of Israel; it shall crush the borderlands of Moab, and the territory of all the Sethites” (NRSV Num 24:17)
Just to prove that he is really for those wanting to buy their first home, Donald Trump has reversed an Obama administration effort to reduce the monthly cost for those new home owners.
The Trump administration has suspended a cut in fees on FHA-insured mortgages that had been set to take effect this month.
A reduction in the Federal Housing Administration’s annual mortgage insurance premium had been scheduled to take place Jan. 27. In one of the first acts of the Trump administration, the cut in premiums has been suspended indefinitely.
Ben Carson, the housing secretary nominee, had hinted at this move last week, during his confirmation hearing. He said that the Obama administration’s announcement of the premium cut had been “done on the way out the door” and that the cut would cost $5 billion next fiscal year. “That’s not chump change,” he said, “so certainly, if confirmed I’m going to work with the FHA administrator and other financial experts to really examine that policy.”
For most borrowers buying homes with down payments of less than 5 percent, the monthly mortgage insurance payments will remain $141.67 a month for a $200,000 loan. It would have fallen to $100 a month.
This action is the absolute opposite of what Trump promised if elected.
As I am driving a 2001 Nissan Maxima with over 115,000 miles, I am considering a newer car, maybe brand new, in 2017. Toyota’s 2018 Camry will be available in late 2017. The car’s styling has always been a bit stodgy. Reports are saying the 2018 model will offer some sleeker styling and some important safety features. Knowing Camry’s reliability history makes this a car I am definitely going to consider.
According to Toyota, the redesigned Camry features a lower center of gravity aimed at making it more aerodynamic and fuel efficient. The new car also has a two-inch longer wheelbase. And the hood, cowl, and dashboard height have all been lowered for better outward visibility.
Mechanically, the 2018 Camry offers the same familiar powertrains: a 3.5-liter V6, and 2.5-liter four-cylinder engine. Both will be paired to a new eight-speed automatic transmission, as experienced recently in Consumer Reports Highlander and Sienna test vehicles.
A four-cylinder hybrid will also be available, mated to a continuously variable transmission (CVT) and featuring Toyota’s latest fuel-saving technology. Horsepower and fuel economy estimates were not disclosed.
The words “Affordable Health Care” are a contradiction. By its very nature health care is unaffordable. That is the reason so many countries have embraced universal health care as a national responsibility.
The rhetorical term oxymoron, made up of two Greek words meaning “sharp” and “dull,” is itself oxymoronic.
As you probably remember from school, an oxymoron is a compressed paradox: a figure of speech in which seemingly contradictory terms appear side by side. British writer Thomas Gibbons characterized the figure as “sense in the masquerade of folly.” This explanation comes from http://grammar.about.com/od/rhetoricstyle/a/100-Awfully-Good-Examples-Of-Oxymorons.htm.
In my opinion the most outrageous oxymoron statement was “Peace for our time.” It was said by Neville Chamberlain on September 30, 1938.
My good friends, for the second time in our history, a British Prime Minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honor. I believe it is “peace for our time.” Go home and get a nice quiet sleep.
On September 3, 1939 in response to Hitler’s invasion of Poland, Britain and France, both allies of the overrun nation declared war on Germany.
While health care is hardly in the same category as a war, the Affordable Health Care Act is not affordable.
Obamacare rates are going way up. The latest estimate from the federal government is that the average midlevel Obamacare plan, the most popular choice, will cost about 22 percent more in 2017 than it did in 2016. This is based on data from 39 states where people sign up through the HealthCare.gov website and some preliminary data from four other states and the District of Columbia.
The health care industry is a “for profit” system that hides under the IRS category of “non-profit” but pays its management high rewards. Kaiser Permanente CEO Bernard J. Tyson earned $2.3 million in salary and other compensation in 2010, according to Kaiser’s federal tax filing.
For profit companies Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini and Cigna CEO David Cordani both saw their total pay surge to $17.3 million in 2015 after earning $15 million and $14.5 million, respectively, in 2014.
Over the past six months, Mylan, which is one of the world’s largest purveyors of generic medicines, raised prices more than 20 percent on two dozen products. And Mylan also boosted prices by more that 100 percent on seven other products, according to Wells Fargo analyst David Maris, who called some of the price hikes “exceptionally large.”
So where is the affordability? The idea of controlled costs is a myth. There are no laws limiting the profits that hospitals earn, pharmaceutical companies earn, or insurance companies earn.
For reasons that evade me the GOP’s war on Obamacare offers no reasonable alternative. Of course if their intent is to protect health care profits by returning health care to the way it was before Obamacare was enacted, they are on the right path.
Coast Contact 