Opportunity Cost or Just Cheap?

I walked inside the local UPS store with a 2-pound package. I wanted to ship it via USPS, thinking that it would be cheaper than the UPS rates. But their USPS rate for this package was $25 which was just a few dollars short of the content. The UPS fee was cheaper, $18 for ground shipping.

The clerk said, if I go to the actual post office, their fees would be much lower. A bit irritated and hungry, my husband agreed to drive to the post office but waited in the truck. I went inside, there was a huge line of 12 people and only one clerk, the rest were sorting mail while giving people occasional murderous looks from their tedious task on a Saturday morning.

I decided to use the electronic scale in the lobby as there was no line at all. The package was weighed, accepted, and it was time to pay $13.90. I inserted the card, forgetting that it was my husband’s card, and waited for the payment screen. The electronic gods wanted a pin, and carelessly, I used mine. It was, of course declined, as the pin was not correct. The machine asked me to try again, and I did, with the same result. Irritated to say the least, I walked back to my husband who was sitting cozily in the air-conditioned cab and asked him to come and do the pin. He touched the wrong key and again, failure. By this time, the bankcard had been locked but we had no idea.

We drove back to the UPS store, having eaten sufficient crow to gag both of us, we mailed the package for $18, an outrageous amount compared to what we were shipping.

Happy to be rid of the said package, we went to Pot Belly’s for a sandwich, but the bankcard was now locked and was declined. Bless the banksters who want to protect our cards! Now, we had the unpleasant duty to call them and explain that it was we who forgot the pin, not some card thief from the post office. We paid with cash, ate, and started laughing at the same time.

We are not sure which was more irritating, the fact that we wasted 45 minutes of our collective time, gasoline, wear, and tear on the truck, and whatever calls we must make to the bank, all of which had a steep opportunity cost, much larger than the extra postage, or the fact that we were so cheap and refused in the beginning to pay the extra $4.10 to mail the package via UPS. Lesson learned, do not mess with the UPS or the USPS, they are both quite expensive and slow.

Economics set aside, we decided on the positive side that it was all worth it because we spent “quality” time together, with the silly realization that we are old and forget pins, and that it is harder than we thought to remember so many different ones.                                       

 

No Longer Your Parents’ America

It was a decade ago when I wrote a book about my 20-year life under communism – education, religion, lack of freedoms, lack of food, lack of human rights, deprivation of basic travel, necessities, water, toilet paper, medicine, the horrible free medical system that was not worth having, bad hospitals, bad doctors, the lack of drugs and vitamins in pharmacies, the awfully crowded and miserable public transportation, the constant policing, the “socialist scientific” indoctrination in schools, and many more.

And today, we are experiencing in the United States, the socialist tyranny I lived under in the socialist republic ruled by the Communist Party with an iron fist. There is one fundamental difference, Americans still have guns, for now.

Americans no longer have representation in the federal, state, or local governments. Their voices are drowned out during peaceful protests through severe jail sentences in solitary confinement while the voices of our enemies and of invaders of America are allowed to ring louder and louder. They have more rights and legal representation than any other American who is not a hard-core Marxist on the left.

Americans still have a false sense of freedom which is dispelled daily – there is no freedom anymore, no justice, no law, a few honest representatives are shouting in the wind against the tyrannical government, against the infringement on people’s rights through U.N. Agenda 2030 and the global Reset imposed from Davos, Switzerland.

Corrupt politicians are reorganizing the lives of billions and all economic activity under the excuse of a flu virus. Whether it was enhanced in the lab on purpose to “gain function” or occurred naturally, nobody seems to know since science is now “settled” in a global “consensus.” Leftist media and scientists with the help of technocracy have all the politically correct answers, and the other half of the scientific community is wrong and therefore must be silenced at all costs.

Our lives will never be the same. It was made obvious, if one cared to listen to a speech in 2008 delivered by then soon to be President Obama that “we are five days from the fundamental transformation” of our society. And we did transform profoundly since then. Our best days are behind us.

The military is now ruled by woke generals who seem to be more interested in twittering with ordinary people about an experimental vaccine instead of strategizing to prepare our military.  They are consumed by the goal to find non-existent white supremacists among the ranks in a society with a most diverse and tolerant population.

Speaking to an Eastern European from a former Soviet satellite socialist republic that had “destroyed” the communist party in 1989, it was revealed that a radical neo-communist party is now ruling the country. These utterly corrupt politicians, who are keeping their population locked down in a semi-martial law status, are sponsored by billionaire elites’ non-governmental organizations (NGOs), an unelected shadow government that directs their lives in the same direction and end around the globe.  

“The abject fear and apathy that depressed people live under, the medical martial law, have robbed many of the will to live,” he said. The medical tyranny closed hospitals to any illness other than Covid, and thousands of people had died untreated of cancers and other medical conditions as the hospitals were emptied to make room for massive Covid casualties that never transpired.

People who died on ventilators were very old and terribly sick. But many died of diseases completely neglected during the lockdowns – cancer (lack of chemotherapy), heart attacks, strokes, appendicitis, bleeding ulcers, etc. Elective surgeries with easy fixes were postponed and problems escalated, permanently injuring, and even killing the patients.

Healthy citizens were whisked off the streets by police turned medical doctors under the excuse that they looked sick and feverish. These healthy people were forced to stay in state hospitals for 14 days during which time they were given forced treatments they did not understand nor needed.

“People are dumbed down into a stupor,” he said. They are hoping that someone else will rescue them from this nightmarish predicament, and he was wishing that the somebody else would be the United States, just like they did during WWII.

The difference is that the global enemy then was Nazism, and nobody wanted to live under Hitler’s despotic boot.

Today the global enemy are billionaire elites and large corporations, high tech, and others who are pushing Marxism because they know better how humans should live and where. Such elites have the power to control us with the push of a tech-button, and money to fund such control. And governments are using corporate elites to do their bidding; such illegal control by politicians would be forbidden by the U.S. Constitution.

America did save the world during WWII, but it is now in no position to do so again, they cannot even save themselves from the scourge of socialism/Marxism dominating our government today.

My interlocutor was shocked and seriously upset, he never thought that this would happen to the glorious and bright city on the hill, built to such heights by its brave soldiers who sacrificed so much, many generations of selfless Americans who gave their lives for the cause of freedom for their children and grandchildren to live better lives than they did.

Now, their children and grandchildren are hard-core Marxists, indoctrinated by public schools and destroying their own future for the empty construct promises of “equity” and “equality” that nobody can possibly deliver.

Someday they will wallow in equal misery, but they will have no memory of the better life capitalism had forged for their parents and grandparents, a life built by brave American soldiers and by the financial sacrifice of hard-working Americans and legal immigrants.

Each day at noon, WMAL radio station in Washington, D.C. plays the National Anthem preceded by the phrase, “We are one nation under God, indivisible, together.” Are we?

 

 

Western Elites and the Marxist Nomenklatura

As billionaire techies and political elites have taken over the United States, dictating how the government operates and how Americans live from now on, while the Constitution is just an old document sitting in the National Archives, it is worth comparing these American elites to the Marxist nomenklatura in the Soviet satellites of the twentieth century to understand the size and scope of the Marxist control now in the former land of the free because of the brave.

What was and still is the nomenklatura in the former and current socialist countries ruled by the communist party?

The nomenklatura was the elite beholden to Marxist ideology and tyrannical rule, as Pacepa described it, a “social superstructure recognizable by its privileges.” And he was not talking about the leftist construct of “white privilege.” This was a privilege that indicated a person’s connection to the communist party and the status derived from this relationship, a status that nobody else could attain or hold.

The nomenklatura members did not travel by ordinary means of conveyance – buses, trains, and street cars were for the unwashed proletariat. They used expensive and free government cars bought and paid for by the people’s money. Techies have their own wealth which they flaunt when they travel by private planes, yachts, and limousines while thy tell the rest of us to drive small cars to save the planet from global warming.

The color and make of the car indicated the owner’s status in the Marxist hierarchy – the more expensive cars and darker colors indicated the higher positions. Techies travel by yachts and most expensive cars or fly into space.

Nomenklatura members did not live in 400 ft. apartments constructed from reinforced concrete, they lived in fashionable villas or luxury apartments nationalized (confiscated) from the bourgeoisie or built with proletariat labor and money collected from the proletariat’s dues. Techies and political elites live in mansions surrounded by tall fences and body guards.

The communist nomenklatura did not stand in endless lines each day to get whatever food and necessities were for sale, they shopped in their own elite stores. American elites shop in expensive stores by appointment only or associates bring merchandise to their multi-million-dollar mansions so they can try things on away from the unwashed masses. Food is catered to their mansions and full-time cooks prepare their meals.

Nomenklatura people did not eat in restaurants with normal people, fighting for a table, they had their own restaurants/clubs that catered only to them. Billionaires have their own restaurants and special rooms where they are served by agreeable waiters who jump at their every whim.

Nomenklatura members never visited crowded and dirty beaches of the proletariat, they had their own villas built or stolen/nationalized from the bourgeoisie, villas located by fashionable lakes, rivers, or the sea front, and guarded by security police. High fences separated their luxurious lifestyle from the prying eyes of the proletariat.

American billionaire elite and wealthy politicians hide behind mansions with tall fences decked with the latest electronic surveillance cameras while they tell ordinary and hard-working Americans that the country does not need border fences, it is un-American to build such fences to protect our country’s citizens.

Nomenklatura members did not spend their vacations packed like sardines in run-down Soviet style motels, they were chauffeured to their own vacation homes by the sea side.

American billionaires spend their vacations on private islands in tropical locales, where the daily rent is an entire year’s salary for a middle-class American. They fly in their private jets or float on luxurious mega-yachts with a full staff taking care of their every need around the clock.

When members of the nomenklatura got sick, they went to private hospitals supplied with the best and latest equipment and staffed by the best doctors money could buy. Treatment was free and no janitor or doorman yelled at them for not paying bribes. And they did not have to be housed two to a bed in filthy socialist wards.

Billionaires go to the best clinics in the world, successful clinics and hospitals staffed by famous doctors thanks to free market competition. Even foreign billionaires travel to the United States for stellar health care unlike any other in the world.

The one person, who knew the life of the nomenklatura and lived it, while helping oppress millions of proletarians, was Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa. He eventually defected to the U.S., the highest defector to the west from the elite life of communists, who ruled Romania’s proletariat with an iron fist and a military boot on their necks for decades, before they were thrown out of power in 1989.

Pacepa was so hated by the dictator for having defected that he put a price on his head and his face on official photographs with the dear leader was completely erased. He spent the rest of his natural life in hiding in the west. He wrote books detailing the abuse, the corruption, and criminality of the nomenklatura and its dear leader.

The sad reality is that history does repeat itself. The formerly free western citizens are obliviously obedient and happy with their faces covered by masks and vaccinated, praising, and cheering the socialists around them, just like the proletariat was obedient to the nomenklatura in the twentieth century. Their survival depended on blind obedience.

 

 

 

 

Global Warming, Trees, and Environmental Racism

The global warming crowd could not get ordinary Americans to buy into their arrogant narrative that the globe is warming due to human activity such as industry, travel, car use, agriculture, breathing, flying, artificial lakes; so, they turned the Armageddon narrative into a profitable leftist climate change industry that has many allies among academics, public school teachers, the mainstream media, and crony corporatism. Who can deny that the climate changes and has done so for thousands of years?

It is not just the environmental justice the Paris Accord and its previous U.N. Agenda 2030 goals, versions of controlling how people live and make a living, every aspect, no matter how insignificantly small. The narrative is now tied, like everything else the left says and does, to one’s skin color. Apparently, the climate and how temperatures affect Mother Earth due to solar flares, water currents around the earth, and volcanic oceanic eruptions above and below earth are now caused by environmental racism.

(The chart above was found in the Nature and Science Museum in Denver, CO)

The left is quite poetic with its definitions, creatively pulling out of the proverbial magician hat amazingly artistic constructs that do not exist. They contort themselves verbally into impossible pretzeled scenarios that bear no resemblance to reality or common sense.

Stating that “science tells us unequivocally that the world is getting hotter: the past six years have been the warmest on record,” Nat Geo devoted its July 2021 cover to “Beating the heat.” The cover claims that “wealthy areas are shady and cool,” but “the tree canopy decreases, and temperatures rise as you drive south,” at least in Los Angeles. (One Nation, Under Heat and Shade)

The conclusion on the cover is, “on a warming planet, this divide between rich and poor leaves many at risk.” There is no denying that shade lowers temperatures, but how shade and the existence or non-existence of trees becomes “environmental racism”, and a measure of “privilege” is hard to understand without impossible mental gymnastics.

The climate change alarmist narrative is that poor neighborhoods have less trees and are five degrees hotter than rich neighborhoods. I have seen areas in western cities quite devoid of trees and extremely hot, yet the residents did not seem to be poor at all.  All inhabitants, rich or poor, white, or black, suffered the same in the summertime heat. It is nobody’s fault that vast flat prairies have fewer trees or that urban neighborhoods did not bother to plant any.

“For most of the past 10,000 years, global average temperature has remained relatively stable and low compared to earlier hothouse conditions in our planet's history.” What’s the hottest Earth has been “lately”? | NOAA Climate.gov

Nat Geo tells us in its July issue that “ultimately, to solve global warming, we must drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions.” This is an interesting statement because CO2 is the gas of plant life. If you reduce CO2 drastically, you are also drastically reducing plant life. There is more CO2 in the Amazon area, as seen from satellite photos, where there is an abundance of trees in the rainforest. Planting more trees is good for the environment: they provide shade as well as convert CO2 into oxygen.  Excess CO2 is pumped into greenhouses to help plants grow faster. Would it not be logical to say that we need more CO2 for plant life, not less?

Urban ecologists, who study “urban forest equity,” claim that “redlined” areas do not have a lot of “green,” due to a lack of public investment in trees. In richer communities, residents can use their own funds to care for trees.

The solution is to have the government step in and plant trees “equitably in all neighborhoods.” Urban canopies can cool a town, but trees must be watered and cared for to thrive. And some adult trees are unnecessarily cut down to make room for more urban development.

And the nagging question remains, how is it racist if urban residents do not care for their own green spaces or the climate is such that rainfall is insignificant, and water is hard to come by and thus expensive? Then there are landscapes such as mountain-prairies and the vast deserts around the globe that are devoid of trees. Is that environmental racism as well?

Trees are certainly an excellent way to absorb the excess CO2 the environmental armageddonists whine about. Can the U.S. plant the trillion trees it has pledged by 2030? If so, would they survive pests, disease, fire, and drought?

 

 

Things I've Learned from Shark Week

Non-scientific things I’ve learned while watching endless hours of Shark Week on Nat Geo:

-          When you dive to see beautiful coral reefs or cage dive to see sharks who have been infuriated by chum, you might be next on their menu.

-          Don’t swim, play, or fish in murky water.

-          Don’t venture out too far as they attack even in chest deep water; some unlucky people were even bitten in knee deep water by smaller sharks.

-          Sharks like warm water and they eat in the morning, at noon, and after five – you are in their habitat and you might be next on their menu.

-          Sharks are always hungry.

-          Sharks can kill for sport, not just food, they are endangering the sea otter population in San Francisco Bay.

-          Most attacks happen not because they confused you with seals, or you are wearing too much shiny jewelry, or bright colors, etc., sharks can’t see that well from far away but they can sense and hear thrashing, fear (sense increased heart rate), can smell quite well, and their decision to attack is most likely deliberate – they are hungry and you are convenient, no matter where you are.

-          Some waters are infested with huge sharks of many species who have been used to eating carcasses of animals disposed of in the water by farmers

-          Some beaches witness strings of attacks because commercial divers feed them in order to attract tourist divers who want to see sharks in their element; sharks get used to humans handing them fish and reaching for fish in fanny packs; such sharks attack swimmers’ rears where the fanny packs are kept by divers and hands that fed them before.

-          Great white sharks are attacked and eaten by killer whales but they only eat their livers, they extract them with surgical precision; the Great white’s liver is huge and makes up one third of its weight.

-          When you are in the water, anything can attack, you are in their habitat, as I’ve learned the hard way two years ago when I was stung by a sting ray in whose vicinity I happened to swim – always shuffle your steps when you enter the water, they hide in the sand.

-          Sharks will enter dive cages and attack those inside; the cages are made of light aluminum; once a huge shark enters the cage, you are dead meat, with a few exceptions when the people inside actually escaped alive.

-          If I want to cool off from the heat on the beach, I am going to enter the water to my ankles and only if the water is crystal clear; otherwise, they do have showers on the beach.

 Watch Jaws repeatedly.

 

My Story for Shark Week

In 1990 I flew to San Diego with uncle Ion who was visiting from Romania. He wanted to see an exotic place in America and San Diego fit the bill.

We went to the aquarium, to the rocks on Imperial Beach, to La Jolla, and across the border into Tijuana.

I rented a car, braved the freeway traffic which was no small feat, coming from MS where the highways are pretty much empty most of the time, took our passports to make sure we were let back in by the border officers, on account that uncle Ion was very tanned and did not look like a pale gringo by any stretch of the imagination, left the car at the border, and walked across into Mexico all the way to downtown Tijuana where there was a large cathedral.

I will not bore you with the details of flies swarming over the freshly cut pineapple in the mercado or the human excrement on the floor of a very busy outdoor restaurant that sold yummy smelling tacos and other Mexican food, or the pungent odor of urine across a bridge.

You are probably wondering what this has to do with sharks. After all, we did not dare get in the angry water and surf breaking across the rocks in Imperial Beach - neither one of us can surf or swim in such high waves.

On returning from Mexico, the border agents did examine uncle Ion’s Romanian passport with suspicion; after we drove back to San Diego, we decided to eat in a nice restaurant in an outdoor mall.

The special for the day, you guessed it, was shark steak. I ordered for him, and he enjoyed his food immensely as I did. The difference was that I knew what the tasty meat was and he didn’t, he just assumed it was some ordinary fish. He did not speak English and he trusted me.

After we left, I asked him if he enjoyed being a cannibal. I explained that, what he ate, was a special kind of seafood, it was shark meat. "You never know what this shark ate before he was caught and became your meal, uncle."

He turned rather yellow and, from then on, carried his English-Romanian dictionary with him at all times, just to be on the safe side.

Uncle Ion, now 81 years old, still remembers this memorable incident from 31 years ago, and I’m not sure he has forgiven me.

 

A Socialist Republic To Replace the Constitutional Republic

Americans who self-describe as socialists, seem to long for a society like that of European Nordic states which are not socialist, they have a capitalist economy with large government welfare paid for by high taxation. I am not sure American socialists, and their followers understand the true definition of a socialist nation, one in which all the means of production are owned by the state. That is perhaps because the online definitions of socialism have been changed to fit the leftist narrative in the media. They know that the public knows little history and thus has no reference point.

A 2018 Gallup poll revealed that 57 percent of Democrats have a favorable view of socialism without really understanding what the Democrat Socialism they promote is. Capitalism, which allowed them to prosper, was only favored by 47 percent. Millennials were polled the year before and 44 percent of them wanted to live in a socialist nation.

After the 2020 election, overall American support for socialism dropped to 43 percent. Support for Socialism in America Sinks Like a Stone After 2020 Election, Hits Lowest Level in Years According to New Study (westernjournal.com)

Harold Meyerson wrote that there were 252 million voting-age Americans. There is a whopping 93 million of Americans voting who view socialism as a desirable society. I am not sure how the 11-40 million illegals, who vote in our elections, factor in the statistics. Personally, I do not have much faith in statistics as they can be skewed so many ways in order to prove or disprove a narrative and the group polled may or may not be representative of the population at large.

But the finding that Americans want socialism appears to be an interesting development because in 1982, when Michael Harrington co-founded the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), there were only 6,000 members of DSA, and membership did not grow by the time he died in 1989.

The Millennials and Generation Z (those younger than Millennials) have overwhelmingly supported socialism in America and branded capitalism as evil while enjoying a lifestyle provided by capitalist enterprises. Brainwashed in schools by educators and environmentalists with well-targeted lessons and videos of gloom and doom Apocalypse and a dying Mother Earth, huge levels of college debt, a shrinking job market, and unmarketable and worthless college degrees, more and more young people have joined the ranks of socialism as promoted by Bernie Sanders, a socialist candidate who never held a productive job in his life.

The socialist movement grows stronger with each younger age group attracted by the promise of “free” stuff. Most of them have never attended an Economics class to learn the concept of opportunity cost, and that nothing is free, someone must pay for it.

Unfair media coverage of Democrat Socialist candidates inflates the rosy picture of socialism as the alternative to the “evil” capitalism which lifted everybody’s boats and gave all Americans an unusual opportunity for prosperity unlike most countries in the world.

My mother used to say, protesters have nothing better to do, Democracy has gone to their heads, and are bored by their wealth and abundance. They have truly never had to suffer any economic indignity, poverty, or famine. By any economic definition, they are not poor, and they are not oppressed as they claim. They just repeat a narrative fed to them from the Mother Ship of the Democrat Party who never lets an opportunity go to waste to score political points in their favor.

Bernie Sander’s campaign and AOC’s victory in New York recorded a huge surge in DSA membership. The Democrat Socialists promised free college tuition, free childcare, full employment, more taxation of wealth to pay for these programs, free housing, universal healthcare, and basic income, while not working. They can just go on the Socialist plantation and find themselves.

How do Americans understand socialism? Even if they search for it online, they find several manufactured definitions which are not accurate – social causes and the public do not own the means of production, the totalitarian governments do.

Thirty-three percent of Americans answered a Gallup poll in 2018 that socialism is a “society with equal standing for everybody, in which benefits, and services were free for all.” Millennials and Generation Z want everything free with no effort expended on their part to build anything or work at anything, just exist.

As I recall from my two decades of living in a socialist republic, nothing was free, and if it was, it was not worth having it, such as health care. We certainly did not have equal standing; we were serfs to the omnipotent government. There were no benefits at all, simply hard work and a meal after standing in line for hours each day.

In a socialist republic, the government in total control of the equally poor proletariat owns all the means of production and decides the quantities of goods and services to be built and to be distributed to the masses, after the ruling elites keep the lion’s share for themselves, their families, and their ideological lackeys and Marxist useful idiots with starry eyes and rose-colored glasses.

American Democrat Socialists view the Constitution as their enemy, starting with the electoral college they despise which stands in their way of controlling everything. They want the majority rule to replace the electoral college thus giving voting power in perpetuity only to metropolitan coastal cities. New York, California, and Illinois would be deciding the voting landscape in perpetuity. American socialists also want to abolish the power of the Senate.

Statistics show that the “majority of the fifty largest cities have Democrat mayors and councils, many of them progressive, even in the reddest of states.” Large cities are the incubation of socialism and Marxism, in alliance with unions and far left ethnic organizations, cities in which crime, poverty, homelessness, and other criminal activities dominate. Harold Meyerson wrote that “we haven’t seen an upsurge like this since the wave of municipal socialism in the early 1900s.”

Socialists helped promote public banks, public utilities, social housing, mixed-income housing, worker and community-owned businesses, co-ops, taxpayer entitlements (welfare). Prominent among urban organizations are public/private partnerships associated with the U.N. Agenda 2030, the destruction of suburbia by adding low-income mixed-use, high-rise housing among expensive single-family homes for which owners have worked and saved their entire lives. Looking again at the Nordic countries of Europe as a role model for their socialism, urbanites want a “social wealth fund along the lines of Norway.”

Many lawmakers have turned socialists and Marxists. The House Progressive Caucus numbered 102 Socialist Democrats in 2018.

Socialists want to break up the big banks and to destroy Wall Street; they want to nationalize the private sector and transfer ownership to employees and the public. That really did not work well in the former socialist republics run by the Communist Party – those in power controlled everything and the proletariat was left with nothing after confiscation of wealth, only hard labor, equal pay, and a horrible 400 square ft. tiny concrete apartment for which they paid the rent decided by the state.

There is a vast difference between asking for more welfare from your government in the Nordic model of social welfare paid for by the private capitalist sector, and a socialist republic where the means of production are owned by a totalitarian government who demands cheap and egalitarian labor from the subservient population.

Americans on the left are far too ignorant to understand history and economics, they are too busy demolishing monuments and installing statues of criminals as role models instead.

And the sad reality is that we are sliding irreversibly into socialism, the precursor to communism. The constitutional republic, for all practical purposes, is comatose.

Cuba is Protesting to Gain Freedom from Communism

As this administration’s spokesperson is twisting herself into a verbal pretzel to present the protests in Cuba as something other than what they are, a cry for freedom and an end to the communist tyranny which has gripped the island since 1959 when Castro’s brutal Marxists took over, the American Marxists are busy promoting and pushing Marxism in America, using invented constructs, i.e. non-existent white supremacy, critical race theory, to convince the American public that it is what they want, freedom from capitalism and installation of Democrat socialism using Karl Marx as their icon and mentor.

Castro self-described as a socialist, a Marxist, and a Leninist.

The Blaze wrote, "So when these protesters are yelling 'freedom' and 'enough,' there are people within the administration who think they are saying 'freedom from rising COVID cases?'”

Could it be that they are tired of being thrown in jail and tortured because of their political opinions that disagree with the Castro’ Marxists?

Could it be that they want real medical care, not Hollywood’s version of reality in which Cubans have stellar care? It is so “exceptional” and free that Castro himself sought medical care in the capitalist world he so despised. When Marxist actors from Hollywood visit the island with a film crew, they are shown a Potemkin village clinic that only exists for show or for the care of communist party cadres and apparatchiks.

Could it be that they want food on their tables daily, without having to face empty grocery stores and endless lines to buy basics, including toilet paper?

Could it be that they want drugs in their pharmacies, not just empty promises of prosperity?

Could it be that they want a functional infrastructure, not dilapidated buildings and decaying roads that are oozing cracked concrete, fading paint, and poverty unlike any seen in the western world?

Could it be that they want schools free of Marxist indoctrination?

Could it be that families are tired of Marxist teachers turning children against their parents?

Could it be that they want freedom from an oppressive society maintained with heavy armed military and police that do not hesitate to shoot and ask questions later?

Could it be that they want the freedom to travel and vacation anywhere they want?

Could it be that they want decent pay for back-breaking work instead of the equality wages when everyone gets paid the same regardless of effort?

Could it be that Cubans want their souls back from the Marxist devils?

Could it be that Cubans are tired of feeling that they are imprisoned on a tropical island from which there is not escape unless they are willing to flee on a shoddy raft, knowing that they may drown on the arduous trip across 90 miles of shark-infested waters?

Could it be that Cubans want to have the freedom to keep the extra money and wealth generated through their hard work instead of it being confiscated by the tyrannical regime whose rulers live in extravagant palaces and own fat bank accounts abroad?

Could it be that Cubans want to have freedom of speech instead of being jailed and tortured for their thoughts and some shot on sight if they speak against the Marxist regime?

Could it be because democracy and human rights do not exist in Cuba or in any socialist society ruled by Marxists?

Could it be that Cubans are tired of having to sell their souls to the red devils to survive and eat?

Could it be that Cubans are tired of the socialism/communism that has strangled their lives and humanity for six decades and they have not been able to overwhelm the Marxist goons armed to the teeth?

Could it be that Cubans want a prosperous capitalist life, free of communist oppression, and free of equal poverty?

 

 

In Memory of Lois Turner

Lois Turner came into my life like a God-sent angel at a time when I needed an American mom, a friend, and a mentor. Her life was already full of young and old people who listened to her sound and caring advice, but she knew instinctively how much I needed her.

Lois was kind and diplomatic, the quintessential Southern lady, always properly dressed as if going to church, resplendent with her ever-present pearls and earrings that complemented her beautiful blond and always perfectly coiffed hair.

She enchanted me with her stories, her memories, and friendly advice which helped me cope with life in my new country and my new family. Slowly she became my new family, more loving and accepting than any person could imagine or deserved.

Lois was a perfect homemaker who took pride in her two beautiful daughters and her husband, Harold, a WWII veteran of the Battle of the Bulge. His gardening and bird hunting were legendary, and she supported him with the love and care of seven decades of marriage.

Lois’ lovely home was always full of children, her daughters’ friends; they were welcome in her home, fed, and entertained in embracing ways that invited them back over and over. Laughter and joy, games, roller skating, movies, and going to Bible studies and church were particularly important in the Turners’ life.

A pillar of the Okolona community, Lois was an accomplished cook, florist, home decorator, nurse, mom, and wife. She always took care of someone else’s needs first and, if advice was not sufficient, she rolled up her sleeves to help.

Non-judgmental and fair, Lois imparted her wisdom to those who sought her help. Lois did not need a license to practice nursing and counseling – she was an expert because she had a giving and loving heart and a good listening ear.

Lois was most proud of her two lovely daughters whom she had later in life. She doted on them like they were delicate flowers and made sure they would turn into accomplished young women, which they did.

Her sit-down dinners were legendary, every detail attended to, and the food was delicious. She was famous for her upside-down pineapple cake.

Lois taught me how to survive in a society that was as different from mine as going to the moon. She listened, offered suggestions, recounted her experiences traveling to foreign lands like Portugal, and helped me understand the southern way of thinking and the southern culture.

Lois was my American mom and I always felt like I was coming home every time I drove to her home in Okolona. She welcomed me, and eventually my daughters, with open arms.

She nursed my wounds through a painful divorce and, when I remarried years later, welcomed my new husband into her home.

Lois always teased her husband who regaled us with his stories from WWII. Harold became a person we admired for his sacrifice to our country, for his kindness to total strangers he met during the war, strangers whom he fed in his military kitchen.

Lois had a unique talent to make her house a Home and Garden paradise in which friends and acquaintances were welcomed and fed. The only requirement was that they felt comfortable and at home.

Lois left this life on July 11, a few days after she celebrated 72 years of marriage to Harold on June 30. She has become truly the angel that she always was. She is probably teaching other angels in Heaven how to be better role models and more human just like she was with people who surrounded her because she was LOVE and GIVING, a perfect mom, wife, friend, and neighbor.

 

 

Traditional Family or the American Socialist Vision of an Extended Family

Having a child while employed by the federal government in the U.S. now seems to be a piece of cake – both the mother and the father get twelve weeks of paid leave to care for their progeny. The rest of the country is lucky if they are able to get six weeks of unpaid leave without actually losing their jobs.

The American Marxists, according to Sarah Leonard, praised the East German communists who “believed strongly in sex education, occasionally of the soft-porn variety, and in “good examples of sex ed and gender-equal social policy.” She also applauded all of the Nordic states that “boast liberal abortion laws.” These social policies are designed for “gender equality.”

Leonard lauded maternal employment rate in Denmark (over 80 percent) and believes that “generous safety nets also ensures that women are not compelled to marry to tolerate men for mere survival.” In her opinion, such welfare allows people to enjoy a higher quality of life than the average American by working fewer hours and spending more time at home. She fails to mention how deeply in debt these Nordic countries are and how high their taxes are.

Leonard believes that the American family of the future will not experience ‘wage exploitation’ and it is imperative to transform our society into a socialist one. She makes the following policy suggestions for “socialist reproductive justice and care:”

1.       Universal twenty-four hour high quality communal child care

Guaranteeing pre-school in Denmark  – providers cannot charge more than a quarter of the cost and those who cannot afford care for their children get it for free. People who understand economics know that nothing is free, someone has to pay for it and that someone is the government through heavy taxation.

I lived in a truly socialist country with a socialist economy and daycare was paid by the Communist Party only for the children of select Communist Party members in good standing, places were limited, and the rest of the country had to care for their own.

American socialists only quote convenient data from countries that are not socialist countries, they are capitalist economies with generous welfare which extends to day care.

Brenner suggested that, in this country, child care be offered as “worker cooperatives.” Parents and ‘other community stakeholders’ would make decisions. Nobody mentions who these community stakeholders are. Boards of education and social services have overstepped their bounds as of late in regards to our children’s education and well-being.

2.       Housing as a human right To solve the dearth of public housing, she suggests that “massive amounts of public housing” be built, supported by “a vast new infrastructure of health and welfare services, clinics, childcare facilities, kindergartens, schools, sports facilities, public libraries, theaters, cinemas, and other institutions.” To have a perfect ‘socialist care,’ elder care would be combined. This would be called ‘collective governance,’ sponsored by labor unions. Leonard sees this as the only way to “democratize daily life and the world of the family.”

3.       Free abortion on demand Socialists advocate “reproductive justice.” Socialism should have abortions in all hospitals, on demand, and doctors well-versed in performing them. The socialist country I experienced did not allow abortion under any circumstance and doctors and women who received abortions were put in jail with harsh sentences. The Communist Party was interested in increasing the numbers of the proletariat and of its cheap and equal labor force.

4.       Ending policing  This is a trend developing in almost every state of the United States, the Marxist Democrats are busy defunding the police while crimes escalate. Socialists want criminal records to disappear and be replaced by health care, mental health care, less poverty, and housing security, “all core socialist goals” of “restorative and transformative justice.”

Socialists do not mention any personal responsibility for poor education choices, family breakdown, violence, and bad choices in general of those who are incarcerated.

A true socialist society takes a hard line on policing, jail time, criminality, recidivism, and other bad choices their citizens make. They are beaten and incarcerated without any benefit of “restorative and transformative justice,” a liberal construct invented and defined by Marxists in the U.S.

5.       Extended family American socialists propose that family be extended to non-traditional family in light of the homophobia and transphobia they perceive as destroying the landscape of our society. A wide range of desirable arrangements will change family forever.

They see men as menstruating and giving birth.  Others want reproductive labor to be outsourced just like manufacturing. In their neoliberal world, socialists want to break away from what they perceive as an ‘austerity state’ into a radical new world of “multiplicitous families.” Shulamith Firestone declared that pregnancy and birth are “gruesome” and would like all babies to be grown outside the body.

But the history of true socialist societies proves that traditional families are still the keystone of biological life.

American socialists and Marxists use all Nordic countries as examples of perfect socialism when in reality these countries are not socialist, they are capitalist economies with generous welfare programs and high taxation both at the corporate level and for personal income tax.

American Marxist educators, not to be left behind, are pushing a full-porn sex education for American public students, starting as early as kindergarten. No amount of parental opposition to this new curriculum seems to make any difference, the Marxist educators are going full steam ahead with their ideological and sexual education of American students of any age.

 

 

 

The Mining Museum in Nederland, Colorado

On a dry but hot Colorado June day, we drove to Nederland, one of Boulder County’s mountain jewels, past the Barker Meadow Reservoir with its deep blue waters.

The winding road carved between rock peaks and the Boulder Creek eventually took us to the tiny hamlet of less than 1,500 inhabitants. I could only imagine how cold, slippery, and right down impassable the road must be at times in wintertime. 

We were on a quest to visit the Mining Museum and the century-old carousel with its beautiful figures carved by hand by a Vietnam veteran. 

The one room museum had displays inside and out, rusting in the elements, a close-up look at the lives and history of the miners who lived, worked, and died in this area. Opened by the Nederland Area Historical Society, the museum was purchased by the county in the fall of 2012.

The hard rock mining days in Boulder County during the 19^th and the early 20^th centuries were brought home by the huge boulders lining the modern highway, at times perched seemingly precarious above our heads, cutting through the mountains. 

Boulder County’s history for the first 75 years was tied to mining, the leading industry in a barely populated area. The first gold strike in 1859 on Gold Hill brought more explorers and more discoveries of gold and silver. The boom-and-bust cycles of mining through the early 20^th century opened newly discovered strikes, followed by abandonment when the ores were exhausted. It took one ton of rock and back breaking work to deliver one ounce of pure gold. 

Prospectors, working under unimaginably harsh conditions, would take their ore to the assay office whose employees would determine if individual prospectors “struck it rich.” Using heat and chemicals to test the ore, the assayer would deliver the good or the bad news to the prospector about the percentage of precious minerals found in the miner’s rock finds. These miners had migrated to the Wild West to become part of the 19^th century hard rock mining boom. 

Museum Archives photo

Among the rusting equipment sitting inside and outside the building, one can see one of the few surviving Panama Canal steam shovels. Miners used tools like helmets with lamps, bells, trams, and rare mining claim maps to find their “gold.” But the real gold crown jewel was the steam-powered shovel, one of the largest in the world at the time. It scooped tons of dirt while helping canal workers in Panama to build bridges, roads, and drains close to the waterway.

The museum displays blacksmithing tools, maps and documents, ore samples, hand, and pneumatic drills, mine trams, maps, and documents from the 1860s to the present.

The Mining Museum is home to a 1923 Bucyrus 50-B steam shovel whose epic move was chronicled on The History Channel's Mega Movers. Of the 25 steam shovels that helped build the Panama Canal, only this one survives, and it is fully operational, weighing at 130,000 pounds and rated at 75 tons. The 1923 Bucyrus Model 50-B was returned to California, then Denver, and finally was donated to the town of Nederland in 2005. The rest were scrapped for metal in Panama.

According to historical records, 534 Bucyrus and Bucyrus-Erie 50-B shovels were built between 1923 and 1939. “They were among the largest tracked steam shovels in the world at that time. Until 1932, most were steam powered and moved on railroad tracks. In 1923, crawler tracks were added to the 50-B model, creating the first heavy duty, 360-degree rotation mobile shovels.”

The shovel was donated by Steve and Laurel Higgins to the Nederland Mining Museum on October 21, 2005. “This national treasure links a historic engineering achievement, the industrial revolution of the United States, local history of Colorado mining, and good old fashioned hard work by two brothers trying to achieve the American dream. Today it is one of the largest operating shovels in the United States.” Nederland Area Historical Society (nederlandmuseums.org)

Transported to Rollinsville by Roy and Russell Durand, this amazing steam shovel was used at the Lump Gulch Placer, six miles south of Nederland, until 1978.

Hard rock mining is extremely difficult. The rock was blasted with dynamite, the smaller pieces shoveled into buckets and carts, hauled out of the mine, then processed by a mill, ground into a powder, then chemicals were used to separate the valuable ore, usually gold and silver, from the waste rock, and then smelted into bars. These chemicals were poisonous for the environment. One troy ounce of gold was usually extracted from a ton of rock.

The miners used single- or double-jacking methods, holding a steel drill in one hand and a hammer in the other. After each strike, “the miner turned the drill a quarter turn to reposition the cutting edge.” In competitions, a miner could swing a hammer 90 times a minute, that is how strong they were. In double-jacking, one miner would hold and turn the drill and the other swung the hammer.

According to the Mining Museum, the following ores were mined/found in Boulder County:

-          Galena (lead ore)

-          Chalcopyrite (copper ore)

-          Lepidolite (lithium ore)

-          Barite (barium ore)

-          Petzite/Coloradoite/Hessite (gold/mercury/silver ore)

-          Mica

-          Sphalerite (zinc ore)

-          Gold (old ore)

-          Molybdenite (molybdenum ore)

Tungsten (“heavy stone” in Swedish), a rare metal with the highest melting point of all metallic elements, was mined in Nederland, at the time considered the tungsten capital of the world in the early 1900s. Tungsten is used for lightbulbs, TV tubes, steel alloys; tungsten carbide is used in drill bits, high-speed cutting tools, and mining equipment. 

WWI required a lot of tungsten which raised its price from $5 per unit to $105 and the town of Tungsten grew to 3,000 people in a sparsely populated area, and it became the richest town of its size in Colorado. According to the archives, “peak production in 1916 generated $4 million in revenue. Barker Dam had been built to provide power to the mills.  The end of WWI put a stop to the tungsten mining.”

Gold mining in the area took place from the mid-1800s to mid -1900s. Clear Creek was dredged with Eleanor #1 and Eleanor #2 on the historic Arapahoe Bar between 1904 and 1907 by the National Dredging Company (led by Herman J. Reiling); it was environmentally disastrous as the dredges left behind ruined fertile bottom soils forever.  The dredges scooped the rich soil from the riverbed and sifted out the “flour gold.” The “flour gold” was too fine for the technology of that time to be able to recover all gold from the soil of Arapahoe Bar. Golden, Colorado farmers refused to sell any more land to the company.

Silver was found with gold, copper, lead, or zinc and was a major operation in the Mines. But the market crashed in 1893 and the silver boom ended. Silver is used for jewelry, electronics, silverware, photography, finance, and investment.

The assay office took the miner’s rock finds to determine how much precious gold and silver were mixed in with other metals. The entire process, described by the museum archives, was quite complicated:

-          Crushing (the rock was pulverized like salt; a “chipmunk crusher” transformed the rock to pea-size, then a muller ground it to rock flour)

-          Splitting (separated the sample with a riffle splitter)

-          Weighing (a precision balance weighed exactly 29.167 grams of the sample)

-          Firing (the sample was poured and melted at 2000 degrees into a ceramic cup called a “crucible” to create certain chemical reactions, i.e., lead fuses with gold and silver)

-          Pouring into a mold (the lead dropped at the tip of the mold and the “slag” sat on top; the mold looked like a cornbread baking tray)

-          Cupellation (the lead button was put into a “cupel,” a small cup made of bone ash, and heated; during heating, the molten lead oxidized back to litharge and was absorbed by the bone ash; a small bead of molten gold and silver were left)

-          Parting (silver was dissolved using nitric acid, and only gold was left)

-          Final weighing (gold was weighed and converted into ounces per ton, thus determining the value of the ore find)

Miners spent most of their days underground, away from precious sunlight, and it was essential that they had good lighting in the tunnels. They used oil wick cap lamps, carbide lamps (invented in 1900, they burned acetylene gas produced by mixing water and calcium carbide), candlesticks, safety lamps, and electric lights. Safety lamps, invented in 1815 in England, reduced gas explosions. The electric lights were the safest. Thomas Edison invented a battery-powered electric light in 1914 which gave the miners 12 hours of lighting and could be recharged at the end of each shift.

Driving by the closed mines, one wonders what became of the families whose livelihoods depended on such hard and dangerous labor, devoid of sunlight, with fathers and sons toiling underground like moles to extract metals from the rocks. We could never genuinely appreciate the sacrifice these men made to provide society with metals like tungsten, silver, and gold.