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Just heard about the horrible murder that happened Thurs. night. Frank Cali, shot many times right on his own doorstep. And ran over with a truck to make sure. Or just to be mean. Very disrespectful, one of our great N.Y.P.D. Officers said -- you do it in Manhattan, he says. Not at the guy's house in Staten Island. Show some respect, show a little class. Whatever happened to class? I'll tell you, New York is one tough town. Maybe a little too tough. But, it's home and I miss it a lot. My condolences & best wishes to the Family. If there's anything you need, anything you want, I'm ready to help. As always. Rest in peace, Franky! foxnews.com/us/frank-cali-gambino-crime-family-boss-fatally-shot-outside-staten-island-home-reports

I like to take a moment to thank all the people that work hard to keep this site up and running.

For many of us, this website is like a second home. There are a lot of people that work hard to keep this site up and running with new content for us to talk about. These people are not being paid, yet do fantastic work.

I'd like to thank The Mighty Buzzard for a lot of the stuff he (presumably ;) ) does behind the scenes that none of us ever hear about or see. The editors do fantastic work by editing stories so they look consistant. This takes a lot of time. These people donate significant amounts of time for us. Take a moment and thank them:

martyb
janrinok
CoolHand
takyon
NotSanguine
charon
Fnord666
chromas
mrpg
FatPhil
cmn32480

I'm sorry if I forgot anyone! It wasn't intentional and I appreaciate whatever you do too!

Update, I did VETO of the Reckless Resolution. So chuffed!!! pic.twitter.com/tEgQFkcMs1

About to do 1st. VETO -- as I promised. About to protect our Country & "people" by signing my magnificent name. And already feeling incredible!! insider.foxnews.com/2019/03/15/hogan-gidley-president-trumps-first-veto-after-border-emergency-declaration-blocked video.foxnews.com/v/6014452641001

So horrible what just happened in the "country" of New Zealand, home of my fabulous gay friend Peter Thiel. He's gay, and that's O.K. So say I, and so says V.P. Pence.🏳️‍🌈

New Zealand, they've been bringing in many Muslims. Often referred to as the Islam Invasion. And so many are good people. Innocent people. But, somebody thought it was too much Muslim. And they had 49 people dieing. Or, being killed. Also injured. Our thoughts & Condolences go to ALL the people of New Zealand. On all sides.

But I'm not offering just my very smart thoughts. I'm offering much more. New Zealand, if you're listening -- America is with you. We stand with you, fully. And if you need some bottled water, if you need paper towels, we will bring it. We have plentiful supplies of paper towels. As well as a magnificent Air (soon Space) Force. And you have a big mess on your "hands." Lots of blood, and other things. Probably some other things, right? Do you know Formula 409? We had a maid from El Salvador, we taught her Formula 409. And now she's one of the biggest people doing that one. God bless!!! oann.com/president-trump-offers-condolences-to-new-zealand-after-deadly-mosque-attack-49-dead

Well the good news is that most congresscritters do, and Trump's fake-ass emergency was rejected.

41 Republican Senators and 182 Republican House Representatives, on the other hand, just proved how completely full of crap they are.

Folks, I talked this morning with Dennis/Boeing. And it wasn't a "nice" talk. Boeing, as you know -- big crash in Nambia. We will never surrender America’s sovereignty to an UNelected, UNaccountable, global bureaucracy. Often referred to as United Nations. America is governed by Americans. We reject the ideology of globalism, and we embrace the doctrine of patriotism. Around the world, responsible nations must defend against threats to sovereignty not just from global governance, but also from other, new forms of coercion and domination.

That said. When you have 157 people dieing horribly. And ZERO survivors. It's a little bit much. Even if a huge amount of those was U.N. people. They're still victims (RIP!!). My prayers and condolences -- also thoughts -- to the families of the victims.

I'll tell you, they're the victims of Modern Digital. Boeing had a great thing. Called the 737. That one has been flying more than 50 years. And, only about 5,000 people killed in that one. Very safe airplane -- steam. But, they had to "upgrade" it. With the latest digital. Cyber everything. They maxed everything out, they call it 737 MAX. And we had one of those crashing very badly in October -- Lion Air of Indonesia. ZERO survivors from that one either. Very bad (RIP!!).

But, Dennis says it's safe. I don't think so. I don't think so. They put so much cyber in it. And you have to be Einstein to fly that one. I'm the first President that ran an airline. Not counting Bush Original and Air America. So I know more about this than anyone. Airline guys are like Tim/Apple. They don't want to hire Einstein. They don't want a Computer Scientist from M.I.T. And they don't want a College graduate. They want somebody that went to Flight School, that hopefully passed Flight School. Smart enough, but not too smart. A hard worker that's not looking for a lot of money. Somebody that, when huge flames start shooting out of the tail of the airplane, will know what buttons to push to make everything O.K. But Boeing took away the buttons. They put in Touch Screen. Put in Modem. And complicated, very greatly, the lives of our pilots. Nambia, the flames came out of the tail. And nobody knows what happened in the cockpit. But people are saying, the pilots didn't know what to do. Because Touch Screen is like a woman, there's so many very special ways to touch it. The pinch. The swipe, or wipe. The tap. Double tap. The press -- long press. Drag -- it never ends. And these guys, probably, were going, "oh, flames coming from tail, swipe left or swipe right?" Because Boeing took something old, something simple, 737. And made it as complex as Tinder. Or Grinder. Unnecessary. Dennis/Boeing, get your act together. Or our foe the European Union will eat your lunch!!! youtu.be/UZq3iCn2y74

Something I've been thinking about a bit lately is the ability to communicate your message well. I'm not the best at it but it's not difficult to spot those who really are. Their number sure as fuck doesn't include Jordan Peterson. Or most any intellectual, especially with an academia background, for that matter.

You know who the best are? Really good standup comedians. They have to be. If you need to explain a joke, it's no longer funny. If you're consistently not funny, you have to get a dreaded day job.

If you want to take up public speaking in any sort of persuasive capacity, you could do a lot worse than to learn from them.

Looking at our wonderful Daily Mail, and this headline really says it all. "Looters take to Venezuela's streets as blackout enters its FIFTH day killing 15 kidney patients as under-pressure president Maduro claims the power cut was caused by an 'imperialist' electromagnetic attack from the US" dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6793585/Venezuelans-turn-looting-Caracas-fourth-day-power-outages.html

Very poor leadership ability by Crazed & corrupt Nick Maduro (I don't call him the President), and others in the Food Starved Venezuela regime, who are not able to get their workers to turn the electric on.

Puerto Rico, they had a big Black Out there, right? And then, so many hurricanes came through, that turned into a whole problem in itself (big worry for folks like myself that own property in the Caribbean). But, what happened after was so different. Because Puerto Rico is not Socialist. They hired Whitefish Energy. From beautiful Whitefish Montana -- home of my former Secretary, Ryan Z. And home of Richard Spencer. Big fan of mine, I'm not such a big fan of him. Can we call that one a coincidence? Doesn't matter, they got the job done. Very quickly, for very little money. Because of me. It's called leadership. Something Nick Maduro has none of. ZERO. And his country is suffering, very badly, because of it. Not just the Black Out, it's many things. Somebody tried to whack the guy with a Drone. Which you didn't hear about on Soylent News -- censored, or Rejected story. They failed very badly.

But, we're not going to fail. We're sending "aid." I hired Elliot Abrams. Very smart, and famous guy. He knows all about sending "aid" from when he worked for Ronnie Reagan. And he also worked for Baby Bush, he was in charge of spreading "democracy." He spread it to Iraq, he did so much of the planning for the Iraq War & Invasion. He tried to spread it to Venezuela, he got President Chavez (RIP!!) out of office for a couple of days. That one was a failure, we're not going to fail again. Because Donald J. Trump is running the show now!!!!

It's important to know what power actually is if you want to take the power back, fight the power, feel the power of love, or just to know when you've got the power and if it's OVER 9000. It's recently come to my attention that some folks don't, so I thought about it a bit and I'll lay the most basic fundamentals out for you all.

Power in the human context is the ability to exert your will on a situation. Nothing more, nothing less.

Direct, personal power (your ability to do something relevant and influential) is the only real power. The primary varieties of this are the ability to create and to destroy. Most other varieties are eventually rooted back in one of these if you follow them back far enough, though they may be notable enough to warrant their own name. Yes, complex interplays of multiple power sources are quite common but we're talking fundamentals today.

The most important of these is probably proxied power. You know, like governments wield. Be it power granted them by their citizens or by force of arms, they only hold this power by the consent of those from which it ultimately originates.

Now, that's not to say there aren't force multipliers, like say having a gun. They absolutely exist but they're not power in and of themselves; they require human agency to mean anything.

I'm also not discounting that non-human or even non-living things can exert influence in the world - the sun does this every day - that's just not what we're discussing here.

One last bit before I save this entry. Money is not power. It can rent power. It can buy power. But it is not itself anything but paper, ones and zeroes, or whatever. Why do I say this? Because the person with the direct power, proxied power, or some sort of force multiplier must first be willing to rent or sell it. Granted, this is so often the case that it's an extremely useful thing to have but don't make the mistake confusing what something can be exchanged for and the thing to be exchanged.

There, hope that's cleared up for you now if you hadn't thought it through yourselves yet. Hopefully it'll make getting to the heart of the matter a little easier in discussions down the road.

I was considering the opposition to Federal taxation and wondered what might happen if the requirements to pay Federal taxes were optional on a state-by-state basis.

The way this would work is that state legislatures could opt the residents and businesses of their state out of paying any Federal taxes, levies and fees.

In order to make this reasonably fair, if a state were to opt out, all those in the state would no longer receive any Federal monies, including highway funds, Medicaid block grants, Superfund grants, education funds, federal government contracts (including subcontracts), Medicare, Social Security, military bases, or any other appropriations from the Federal government.

There are a couple of ways this could go. Those states who are least dependent on federal funds might opt out.

Alternatively, states with populations that are most anti-Federal taxes might opt out.

What other scenarios might drive a state to opt out?

More details:
FY 2013 Federal taxation and spending by state
Federal Tax Revenue By State

Would you support such a law? If so (or not), why (or why not)?