Who do you think this affects, Bandito? The mouth breathing Trump voters in rural America that might have a GED? Or the coastal liberal elites with advanced degrees that TrumpFans like you hate so much?
Like I said, you ain’t “average” and that goes beyond “ we didn’t have much money”.....LandM wrote: ↑Wed Dec 04, 2019 3:41 pm Ok,
I will play but this is the last attempt:
1. My father was an E-9 USAF and retired after 30 years - since you guys like to Google - go figure out what my dad earned in the 1970's - there were 5 kids - I started working and earning my own way at 12;
2. My dad was never home - thankfully through mentors (teachers and coaches) they kept me on the straight and narrow - I could have been that kid snorting glue, doing drugs; and winding up in prison.......two of my friends took that path;
3. The only high school communication I had with my dad was when he called from Iran (before the Shah was overrun) and told me I was going to USAFA or not coming home again;
4. I was suspended from the Academy for a year based on not wanting to follow the rules;
5. I eventually graduated and earned my two Masters Degrees because the military requires you get one to make rank - it was not a choice it was whether I wanted to be promoted;
6. I got out and was mentored by a West Point and Harvard MBA graduate;
7. I started with my own money software companies - I love Al Gore;
8. My relatives were plantation owners in SC, NC, and Georgia. My family was well known. Sherman in his illegal burning destroyed my family wealth;
9. I earned my own way and am thankful to those that gave me the challenges - there was no prep school; daddy getting me into elite schools; blue blood; etc.
I earned my own way.......maybe some of you should try it. So I am an average guy but I have had a helluva lot fun being average. I cannot image what it is like with pressure by the family being successful. You make your own success.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... story.htmlHow two undocumented housekeepers took on the president — and revealed his company employed illegal immigrants
As Donald Trump’s personal maid, Diaz was dealing with a fussy celebrity owner who presided like a monarch over the Trump National Golf Club Bedminster long before he was elevated to president. She was an immigrant from Costa Rica working illegally for Trump with a fake Social Security card she had bought for $50. Being invisible was her life’s work.
Moving quickly through the two-story house in the mornings, Diaz carried out Trump’s fastidious instructions. In his closet, she would hang six sets of identical golf outfits: six white polo shirts, six pairs of beige pants, six neatly ironed pairs of boxer shorts. She would smear a dollop of Trump’s liquid face makeup on the back of her hand to make sure it hadn’t dried out.
For decades, and well into Trump’s presidency, illegal immigrants lived as Trump’s shadow family — ever present, if rarely considered. Trump had met many of them. There were three questions nearly every immigrant who worked for him was asked as Trump strolled the grounds of his resorts and golf clubs inspecting their work. “Your name. How much time you’d been there. And if you like it,” said Margarita Cruz, a housekeeper. This banter often ended with Trump pulling out $50 and $100 bills for tips.
This transactional relationship of discreet service for long hours and often low pay began to evolve as Trump entered politics on the promise to keep out the upward-striving immigrant workers who crumbed his table and scoured his toilets. When Trump referred to some Mexican immigrants as criminals and rapists, when he vowed to wall off the U.S.-Mexico border to prevent an immigrant “invasion,” the worry and anger began to build in the kitchens and laundry rooms of his properties.
Trump’s undocumented workers were forced to smile at stomach-churning comments from wealthy members once he became president. “You’re still here? How come we can’t get rid of you? I’m going to call Trump, you [expletive] Mexican,” Gabriel Juarez, who had been head waiter for a decade at one of Trump’s New York golf clubs, said a member told him jokingly.
Trump and his family spent so much time at their properties — and still do — that many Trump Organization employees have stories about encounters with them. But the undocumented workers were often left to perform the most intimate and personal work. Those who cooked and served Trump knew that he liked his cheeseburgers well done and his Diet Coke in small glass bottles with a plastic straw that no one could be seen touching.
AD
Trump loved Tic Tacs. But not an arbitrary amount. He wanted, in his bedroom bureau at all times, two full containers of white Tic Tacs and one container that was half full. The same rule applied to the Bronx Colors-brand face makeup from Switzerland that Trump slathered on — two full containers, one half full — even if it meant the housekeepers had to regularly bring new shirts from the pro shop because of the rust-colored stains on the collars. A special washing machine in the laundry room was reserved for his wife Melania Trump’s clothing.
Donald Trump liked Irish Spring bar soap in his shower. But his housekeepers quickly learned not to throw out his soap even if it had worn down to the tiniest sliver: Trump decided when he wanted something discarded. When that happened, with clothes or newspapers, he would toss them on the floor.
That is just from the first third of the article - not a pretty picture of Trump...Knavs and his wife, Amalija Knavs, were favorites of the Bedminster staff, even if much was lost in translation from Slovenian to Spanish. Amalija Knavs would often cook breakfast in the villa for Melania while Trump regularly ate breakfast in the clubhouse.
One day in 2013, Viktor Knavs went out to play golf wearing one of Trump’s discarded red baseball caps. When Trump spotted him on the fairway, he blew up, and he ordered his father-in-law, in front of other golfers, to remove the hat and get off the course. Diaz and Morales were in the villa when Knavs returned, threw the hat on the ground and cursed Trump.
The housekeepers pieced together the story from what Amalija Knavs told them in English and what they heard from the caddies who were on the course at the time.
“Nobody could wear the red hat but [Trump],” Diaz said.
“The whole world saw what Trump had done to his father-in-law,” Morales added. “[Knavs] was very embarrassed.”
Kismet wrote: ↑Wed Dec 04, 2019 3:41 pm A very smart fellow (former World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov) reflects on living in a totalitarian state and has a warning for all of us His words and worldview are important especially given his real-life experience.
"I lived in the post-truth Soviet world and I hear its echoes in Trump's America"
https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/04/opinions ... index.html
"The totalitarian Soviet Union where I grew up tried to dominate the truth, to distort it and control it. Reality was whatever the Party put out on the nightly news, or in the official newspapers, Pravda, which means "Truth" and Izvestia, which means "News."
It was increasingly obvious back then, even to communist true believers, that what we were being told didn't match the world we saw around us. As the joke went, "there is no news in the truth and no truth in the news." Eventually the disparity between truth and lies became too great; life wasn't improving and more and more information was making it through the Iron Curtain. Denying reality became too grave an insult to our dignity, an underestimated ingredient in the spirit of revolution.
I have lived through several world-changing upheavals. I'm a post-Soviet citizen; the country of my birth ceased to exist in 1991. We enjoyed less than a decade of tenuous freedom in Russia before Vladimir Putin launched its post-democratic phase. My ongoing attempts to fight that tragedy led to my exile in the United States. Now my new home finds itself locked in its own perilous battle -- a battle to avoid becoming the latest member of the post-truth world.
President Donald Trump and his Republican defenders in Congress have followed his lead in declaring war on observed reality. Critical reports are "fake news," journalists reporting the facts are "enemies of the people," a phrase from Vladimir Lenin's, debunked conspiracy theories is repeated, and public servants testifying under oath about documented events are dismissed as Never Trumpers.
Unable to change the facts, Trump and his supporters instead try to shift the debate into an alternate universe where the truth is whatever they say it is today. Trump repeats the same lies over and over, and it's hard to say which is more troubling -- that his followers don't realize that they are lies or that they don't care. Globalization and the internet may have made the world smaller, but now we're experiencing a counterattack, the regionalization of truth.
The internet was supposed to shine the light of truth into every corner of the world, breaking the authoritarians' monopoly on information. But it has also become a light-speed delivery system of lies and propaganda. The web has been chopped into pieces. Like a shattered mirror, each fragment reflects a different distorted image instead of a single reality.
Protests in Iran are difficult to follow when the regime can shut down internet access across the country. It's easier to find out about Hong Kong's pro-democracy protests in just about any country other than China thanks to their draconian censorship. Russia jails bloggers and shuts down nongovernmental organizations while flooding the country, and the world, with disinformation.
It's alarming to see America taking its own Trumpian path down this dark road. In the USSR, we didn't have a choice of which news channel to watch. Americans have limitless options, but many voluntarily confine themselves to a few like-minded sources. For Trump's followers in particular, denying reality is a badge of honor, a symbol of belonging to a defiant cult.
If you watched the impeachment hearings only on Fox News you would have thought things were going great for the President. Any phrase that might sound like it exonerated him -- and there weren't many -- was repeated over and over like a mantra. The copious and damning evidence provided may as well not have existed.
This partisan split along the lines of reality is in keeping with Trump's larger war on integrity, the rule of law, and traditional American values and allies. It's the model of regional powers and regional facts and regional values long touted by Putin and China's Xi Jinping. There is no good or evil, just business as usual with no place for moral arguments over Chinese concentration camps or Russia bombing hospitals in Syria. American companies are also falling in line, with Apple recently changing its maps app inside Russia to show the illegally annexed Ukrainian territory of Crimea as Russian. (Google has done so for years.)
American tech giants are happy to help Putin create a false reality inside the borders of Russia. Apparently Apple and Google will stand up to the FBI, but not the FSB, aka the KGB. Software is soft power, and US companies betray the values of the nation that enabled their success by doing the bidding of dictators. Tech firms defending themselves by saying it's just business, not politics, sound a lot like the Hollywood studios that edited their movies and fired Jewish staff under Nazi pressure in the 1930s.
What's the truth? In the era of regionalized facts, it depends on where you stand, what channel you're watching, and what party you belong to. But there cannot be a red state reality and a blue state reality any more than there should be one world map inside of Russia and a different one outside. Trump is finally facing the music, and that must begin with everyone facing the facts."
LandM wrote: ↑Wed Dec 04, 2019 3:41 pm Ok,
I will play but this is the last attempt:
1. My father was an E-9 USAF and retired after 30 years - since you guys like to Google - go figure out what my dad earned in the 1970's - there were 5 kids - I started working and earning my own way at 12;
2. My dad was never home - thankfully through mentors (teachers and coaches) they kept me on the straight and narrow - I could have been that kid snorting glue, doing drugs; and winding up in prison.......two of my friends took that path;
3. The only high school communication I had with my dad was when he called from Iran (before the Shah was overrun) and told me I was going to USAFA or not coming home again;
4. I was suspended from the Academy for a year based on not wanting to follow the rules;
5. I eventually graduated and earned my two Masters Degrees because the military requires you get one to make rank - it was not a choice it was whether I wanted to be promoted;
6. I got out and was mentored by a West Point and Harvard MBA graduate;
7. I started with my own money software companies - I love Al Gore;
8. My relatives were plantation owners in SC, NC, and Georgia. My family was well known. Sherman in his illegal burning destroyed my family wealth;
9. I earned my own way and am thankful to those that gave me the challenges - there was no prep school; daddy getting me into elite schools; blue blood; etc.
I earned my own way.......maybe some of you should try it. So I am an average guy but I have had a helluva lot fun being average. I cannot image what it is like with pressure by the family being successful. You make your own success.
You understand the difference, do you not? Trump is the leader of our country. China is just a place to do business. Apples and oranges.kramerica.inc wrote: ↑Wed Dec 04, 2019 3:49 pm The same people complaining about Trump's repeated lying (and those buying it) are the ones turning their backs on truth in order to "spread democracy" and the western ways in China.
No doubt many in the NBA have their greed gland over ruling their sense of right and wrong.kramerica.inc wrote: ↑Wed Dec 04, 2019 4:11 pm I'm not saying stop doing business with.
I'm saying don't fabricate a new reality/ignore the truth, like so many in the NBA did.
We hear it all the time from those that blast trump's altered reality.
Right is right. Truth is truth.
Yep. $300mm guys with an incremental Chinese revenue stream.jhu72 wrote: ↑Wed Dec 04, 2019 4:20 pmNo doubt many in the NBA have their greed gland over ruling their sense of right and wrong.kramerica.inc wrote: ↑Wed Dec 04, 2019 4:11 pm I'm not saying stop doing business with.
I'm saying don't fabricate a new reality/ignore the truth, like so many in the NBA did.
We hear it all the time from those that blast trump's altered reality.
Right is right. Truth is truth.
Sorry. The NBA's (ignoring, rebuking and alternate reality) responses to Morey's criticism of China's human rights atrocities is what I was referring...
Typical Lax Dad wrote: ↑Wed Dec 04, 2019 3:45 pmLike I said, you ain’t “average” and that goes beyond “ we didn’t have much money”.....LandM wrote: ↑Wed Dec 04, 2019 3:41 pm Ok,
I will play but this is the last attempt:
1. My father was an E-9 USAF and retired after 30 years - since you guys like to Google - go figure out what my dad earned in the 1970's - there were 5 kids - I started working and earning my own way at 12;
2. My dad was never home - thankfully through mentors (teachers and coaches) they kept me on the straight and narrow - I could have been that kid snorting glue, doing drugs; and winding up in prison.......two of my friends took that path;
3. The only high school communication I had with my dad was when he called from Iran (before the Shah was overrun) and told me I was going to USAFA or not coming home again;
4. I was suspended from the Academy for a year based on not wanting to follow the rules;
5. I eventually graduated and earned my two Masters Degrees because the military requires you get one to make rank - it was not a choice it was whether I wanted to be promoted;
6. I got out and was mentored by a West Point and Harvard MBA graduate;
7. I started with my own money software companies - I love Al Gore;
8. My relatives were plantation owners in SC, NC, and Georgia. My family was well known. Sherman in his illegal burning destroyed my family wealth;
9. I earned my own way and am thankful to those that gave me the challenges - there was no prep school; daddy getting me into elite schools; blue blood; etc.
I earned my own way.......maybe some of you should try it. So I am an average guy but I have had a helluva lot fun being average. I cannot image what it is like with pressure by the family being successful. You make your own success.
You are confusing average with hard work. A lot of people work hard and bust their hump everyday and will never get rich. If you work hard and you do it long enough you will succeed. I am a prime example of that. I never went to college, joined the Army in 1979 because I needed a change. I have never considered myself average. The average people IMO are unwilling to work hard. Once they catch wind of the government entitlement mentality, why should they? I have busted my ass working at times 2 and 3 jobs when I had to. I am now 4 years from retirement and being able to tell Andy Cuomo and NYS to go fudge themselves. My wife and I have almost reached what Bob Brinker calls "critical mass" We have worked hard enough to retire without having to worry about having enough money to do what we want to do. We are not business people, we are not having to meet payrolls, but we are not average.jhu72 wrote: ↑Wed Dec 04, 2019 4:03 pmLandM wrote: ↑Wed Dec 04, 2019 3:41 pm Ok,
I will play but this is the last attempt:
1. My father was an E-9 USAF and retired after 30 years - since you guys like to Google - go figure out what my dad earned in the 1970's - there were 5 kids - I started working and earning my own way at 12;
2. My dad was never home - thankfully through mentors (teachers and coaches) they kept me on the straight and narrow - I could have been that kid snorting glue, doing drugs; and winding up in prison.......two of my friends took that path;
3. The only high school communication I had with my dad was when he called from Iran (before the Shah was overrun) and told me I was going to USAFA or not coming home again;
4. I was suspended from the Academy for a year based on not wanting to follow the rules;
5. I eventually graduated and earned my two Masters Degrees because the military requires you get one to make rank - it was not a choice it was whether I wanted to be promoted;
6. I got out and was mentored by a West Point and Harvard MBA graduate;
7. I started with my own money software companies - I love Al Gore;
8. My relatives were plantation owners in SC, NC, and Georgia. My family was well known. Sherman in his illegal burning destroyed my family wealth;
9. I earned my own way and am thankful to those that gave me the challenges - there was no prep school; daddy getting me into elite schools; blue blood; etc.
I earned my own way.......maybe some of you should try it. So I am an average guy but I have had a helluva lot fun being average. I cannot image what it is like with pressure by the family being successful. You make your own success.
Very comparable to my background. Not raised on the right side of the tracks, but worked my way to that side. I took advantage of the opportunities that were made available. Not an uncommon story, but also less common than it should be in a country that sells itself as one of economic upward mobility. I would submit that we have both made it precisely because we are not average.
Critical Mass: Plainly stated, the Land of Critical Mass is a place in which individuals enjoy their own personal financial nirvana. Differentiation between earned income and assets is a fundamental lesson to learn when thinking in terms of critical mass. Earned income does not produce critical mass......critical mass is strictly a function of assets.
Trump is your President and your Daddy. Don’t care. No one should be mooching off government assistance programs who are able to work. And wow. Your bigotry is showing. Do you kiss your sister with that mouth?a fan wrote: ↑Wed Dec 04, 2019 3:28 pmWho do you think this affects, Bandito? The mouth breathing Trump voters in rural America that might have a GED? Or the coastal liberal elites with advanced degrees that TrumpFans like you hate so much?
At this point, I'm hoping for four more years of Trump. I can laugh and laugh as Trump voters cut off all hope for themselves.
How are those trade wars workin' out for TrumpVoters, Bandito.
Four more years! Four more years!
They aren't. That money goes to kids, but whatever, you don't care, and neither do I
Bigotry? Nope. Real world, buddy. People live where the work is. And that means large cities. Best of luck to you!Trump is not going to do well in prison.RedFromMI wrote: ↑Wed Dec 04, 2019 3:48 pmhttps://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... story.htmlHow two undocumented housekeepers took on the president — and revealed his company employed illegal immigrants
Not a pretty picture of OD:
As Donald Trump’s personal maid, Diaz was dealing with a fussy celebrity owner who presided like a monarch over the Trump National Golf Club Bedminster long before he was elevated to president. She was an immigrant from Costa Rica working illegally for Trump with a fake Social Security card she had bought for $50. Being invisible was her life’s work.
Moving quickly through the two-story house in the mornings, Diaz carried out Trump’s fastidious instructions. In his closet, she would hang six sets of identical golf outfits: six white polo shirts, six pairs of beige pants, six neatly ironed pairs of boxer shorts. She would smear a dollop of Trump’s liquid face makeup on the back of her hand to make sure it hadn’t dried out.For decades, and well into Trump’s presidency, illegal immigrants lived as Trump’s shadow family — ever present, if rarely considered. Trump had met many of them. There were three questions nearly every immigrant who worked for him was asked as Trump strolled the grounds of his resorts and golf clubs inspecting their work. “Your name. How much time you’d been there. And if you like it,” said Margarita Cruz, a housekeeper. This banter often ended with Trump pulling out $50 and $100 bills for tips.
This transactional relationship of discreet service for long hours and often low pay began to evolve as Trump entered politics on the promise to keep out the upward-striving immigrant workers who crumbed his table and scoured his toilets. When Trump referred to some Mexican immigrants as criminals and rapists, when he vowed to wall off the U.S.-Mexico border to prevent an immigrant “invasion,” the worry and anger began to build in the kitchens and laundry rooms of his properties.
Trump’s undocumented workers were forced to smile at stomach-churning comments from wealthy members once he became president. “You’re still here? How come we can’t get rid of you? I’m going to call Trump, you [expletive] Mexican,” Gabriel Juarez, who had been head waiter for a decade at one of Trump’s New York golf clubs, said a member told him jokingly.Trump and his family spent so much time at their properties — and still do — that many Trump Organization employees have stories about encounters with them. But the undocumented workers were often left to perform the most intimate and personal work. Those who cooked and served Trump knew that he liked his cheeseburgers well done and his Diet Coke in small glass bottles with a plastic straw that no one could be seen touching.
AD
Trump loved Tic Tacs. But not an arbitrary amount. He wanted, in his bedroom bureau at all times, two full containers of white Tic Tacs and one container that was half full. The same rule applied to the Bronx Colors-brand face makeup from Switzerland that Trump slathered on — two full containers, one half full — even if it meant the housekeepers had to regularly bring new shirts from the pro shop because of the rust-colored stains on the collars. A special washing machine in the laundry room was reserved for his wife Melania Trump’s clothing.
Donald Trump liked Irish Spring bar soap in his shower. But his housekeepers quickly learned not to throw out his soap even if it had worn down to the tiniest sliver: Trump decided when he wanted something discarded. When that happened, with clothes or newspapers, he would toss them on the floor.That is just from the first third of the article - not a pretty picture of Trump...Knavs and his wife, Amalija Knavs, were favorites of the Bedminster staff, even if much was lost in translation from Slovenian to Spanish. Amalija Knavs would often cook breakfast in the villa for Melania while Trump regularly ate breakfast in the clubhouse.
One day in 2013, Viktor Knavs went out to play golf wearing one of Trump’s discarded red baseball caps. When Trump spotted him on the fairway, he blew up, and he ordered his father-in-law, in front of other golfers, to remove the hat and get off the course. Diaz and Morales were in the villa when Knavs returned, threw the hat on the ground and cursed Trump.
The housekeepers pieced together the story from what Amalija Knavs told them in English and what they heard from the caddies who were on the course at the time.
“Nobody could wear the red hat but [Trump],” Diaz said.
“The whole world saw what Trump had done to his father-in-law,” Morales added. “[Knavs] was very embarrassed.”
